WHO Values Lines Of Text Over Saving Lives

So, it seems that the US has decided to stop funding the WHO.

For those of us who have been aware of how unaccountable and out of control they are for quite a while, it's not surprising that they have been found wanting when it comes to the only thing we all would like them to do very well.

Their failure to cope with epidemics is not just restricted to this one, who can ever forget the former incompetent Director General taking tea with Vladimir Putin at an anti-tobacco and vaping conference in Moscow instead of an event in Brussels to address Ebola killing people very quickly in Africa? She attended Moscow but texted her speech to Brussels.

The US has decided to implement a review because the WHO's handling of the Coronavirus has been an absolute disgrace. Being a highly-professional organisation, the WHO has obviously reacted to this by focussing on what really matters to them in these extraordinary times.

Via The Times.

The World Health Organisation has warned governments about engaging with the tobacco industry over the development of coronavirus vaccines. 

British American Tobacco, whose cigarette brands include Lucky Stripe and Dunhill, said this month that it had made a significant breakthrough in developing a potential plant-based vaccine candidate for Covid-19. 

However, vaccines from Big Tobacco would pose a dilemma for public health officials and governments. Under the WHO’s framework convention on tobacco control, members are restricted in dealing with the industry.

A vaccine to save millions of lives would be a "dilemma" to the WHO? Are you fucking having a laugh? 

The global health body said that “partnership with the tobacco industry undermines governments’ credibility in protecting population health as there is ‘a fundamental and irreconcilable conflict between the tobacco industry’s interests and public health policy interests’.”

Erm, so an industry producing a vaccine is bad because it goes against "public health policy interests"? This must be the biggest "computer says no" statement of all time.

People are dying, but hey, who cares? The WHO has a bit of text and it simply cannot be disregarded. Apparently. 

It's called Article 5.3 and it absolutely doesn't fucking cover this. Not even close! 

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.

Do you see anything in there about refusing a vaccine which could save millions of lives? 

It said that countries including Britain that had ratified the framework in 2004 “should take steps to prevent any interference by the tobacco industry . . . The key point for addressing tobacco industry interference is to reject partnerships and non-binding or non-enforceable agreements with the tobacco industry at any times.”

In other words, the WHO would dearly love someone to come up with a vaccine to prevent deaths caused by their catastrophic incompetence, but sadly if it comes from a company they don't like, everyone will have to refuse it. Computer says no. 

The London-listed BAT, which generated profits of £9 billion last year, has joined the race to develop a vaccine that involves companies worldwide. Its vaccine is being developed with Kentucky Bio Processing, its American biotechnology subsidiary. It said this month that it was in pre-clinical testing and wanted to form partnerships with government agencies on the non-profit project to help to bring its vaccine to human trials, possibly by next month.

Evil bastards!

David O’Reilly, director of scientific research at BAT, has said that the company has contacted healthcare departments to offer access to its research and planned to contact the WHO. 

The government, which has established a vaccine taskforce including industry and academics, is in contact with the tobacco company and other coronavirus vaccine ventures. 

If testing “goes well”, through collaborations with government and third-party manufacturers between one and three million doses per week could be manufactured from June, the company said. Clinical studies typically take more than a year. 

Dr O’Reilly said that history would take a dim view if the company had not told anybody that it had technology that could be deployed rapidly to help to tackle a pandemic.

Well, quite. I don't know about you, but as someone who would like to go out sometime before next Christmas, actually see flour on supermarket shelves again - maybe even visit a pub - and not see escalating deaths all over the world due to the WHO's stunning stupidity, I really couldn't give a rat's chuff who makes a vaccine. I don't think tens of thousands of bereaved families in the UK or elsewhere will care either. 

Deborah Arnott, chief executive Action on Smoking and Health, an anti-smoking charity, said: “The Covid-19 pandemic is a disaster, there have been over 40,000 deaths since it started and rising — but we mustn’t forget that the tobacco epidemic still kills over 22,000 people a day.”

40,000? Try 160,000 and rising.

But besides that, so therefore we should tell BAT to stop working on a cure? Put away your test tubes, guys, close down the labs and your expensive machines, tobacco control has got this. They're putting health warnings on individual cigarettes soon, that'll learn the virus, and no mistake!

Seriously, some of these people should learn to keep their heads down and shut their traps right now. This isn't a fucking game.

Now, it's clear that WHO are puppet masters of people further down the chain, so they kinda have to dance to the WHO's tune. I'm sure they wouldn't be such disgusting people if that burden was taken away from them.

So for the good of humanity, and to help our UK tobacco controllers to not have to act as heartless oafs, it's probably for the best that the UK government stops funding the WHO too.

It might - just might - force them into working out for themselves that an organisation which claims to be a force for good health around the world, should value people staying alive when faced with a deadly virus which kills in days, more than childish ideology and a few sentences of fucking text.

We're All In This Together ... Except For Some

This week, the Secretary of State for Health, Matt Hancock, asked for further help from industry to develop testing for the Coronavirus outbreak. He namechecked a few Titans of industry in his daily briefing which had already downed their usual tools and decided that their talents, and financial clout, could be useful to society in saving lives.

The week before, Hancock had acknowledged the already admirable efforts that the private sector had put in to redirect their ample resources towards tackling the virus, saying:

Many companies are already working urgently to assist us in this and I'm delighted that so many more are looking to step up to this challenge.

It's all hands to the pump and we are all together on this, aren't we? It is so refreshing to see; everyone pulling together in a common cause against a common enemy.

Well, not quite everyone, unfortunately.

On the same day that Hancock said he was "delighted" at the efforts being made, there was one subset of our society which was still excluding themselves from this campaign of working together. You see, British American Tobacco (BAT) had issued a press release - on the very same day - announcing that they were working hard on producing a vaccine. You can read it here.

You would think, wouldn't you, that those in tobacco control would meet to discuss this and decide that now isn't the time to broadcast their childish and insular prejudices to the world. But, I dunno, maybe because communication lines are difficult working for home (I'm being generous) that didn't happen.

Instead, there was a wail of collective outrage from the tobacco control industry, the most vomit-inducing from Wanda de Kanter, a particularly nasty anti-smoking lunatic from The Netherlands.

Yep, in a global emergency, companies she doesn't like should be told to "stop" using their huge resources in an effort to save lives. This, from someone who would call herself part of 'public health'. Note she is not saying that she, particularly, would refuse anything provided by the 'wrong' company if she was on death's door - which is her choice - but that other people who are dying should be prevented from accessing the equipment and that work on a vaccine should cease because she says so.

Considering over 100,000 human beings have died so far, this evil attitude truly beggars belief!

The reference to ventilators is a reaction to a different story broken by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism - an organisation which claims to be the pinnacle of truth in reporting, but currently writes articles to order funded by Michael Bloomberg's puppet, Vital Strategies - about 50 ventilators donated by Philip Morris in Greece.

No-one would have known this story if it wasn't highlighted by the grubby guns for hire of the journalism trade but, sadly, someone far less of a lunatic - and who should know better - chose to chivvy them along by offering this disappointing comment.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health, criticised PMI’s motives. “This is a shameful publicity stunt by Philip Morris International, which owns Papastratos and has a 40% share of the Greek tobacco market,” she said. 

“Smoking makes people more vulnerable to coronavirus, and if they get it makes the symptoms worse, meaning they’re more likely to need ventilators. Papastratos makes €1.3bn a year ... In comparison, the donation of 50 ventilators is a drop in the ocean.”

The fact that Papastratos - an affiliate of Philip Morris - had not courted any publicity whatsoever until the Bureau of Incompetent Journalism blundered in, seems lost on some, obviously.

As if that is not bad enough on its own, shall we test this assertion that "smoking makes people more vulnerable to coronavirus"?

Because, you see, it's not true.

Smokers are conspicuously under-represented amongst cases in both China and the USA. An evidence review published three weeks ago found no association between smoking and the severity of COVID-19. Yet every tobacco control organisation - including Public Health England - in the UK has been spewing this fake news from their social media channels for a couple of weeks now.

So, one could argue that the only people using this virus as a publicity stunt are tobacco controllers themselves. Pretty shameful, huh?

In fact, it's worse than that. While we are all working together to defeat the virus, the tobacco control machine is actively trying to nobble any efforts to join with the noble cause as Hancock has been suggesting.

Another Bloomberg-funded sock puppet made a desperate plea a few days ago for governments to refuse help from not only tobacco companies but vaping ones too. Repeating the lies about smoking and vaping leading to increased risks from the virus, they urged governments to "encourage citizens to quit outright and to hold the tobacco industry accountable for the harm caused by its products, including harm related to COVID-19".

Now, I've always had quite a distaste for extremists in tobacco control. They are devoid of empathy, they pervert scientific principles, treat ethics as if they were an inconvenience and are incredibly venal and selfish.

But, I honestly never believed they could be so monumentally crass as to put their own funding and personal dislikes over and above the greater cause of helping as many people to live as possible.

Maybe I'm being unfair and - just as happened when the WHO installed the butcher of Zimbabwe as a goodwill ambassador, remember that? - there are many others in the tobacco control industry who are disgusted by such a cold, heartless and inhumane reaction to companies trying to help lessen the number of people dying during this real public health emergency, but if so they are extremely quiet about it.

If, at some point, BAT did create a vaccine for the virus, I do hope the massed ranks of selfish and blinkered tobacco controllers who find the manufacturer distasteful will refuse to take it. They would be astonishing hypocrites otherwise, and by declining they would leave more supplies for those in the public who value life above stupid and childish ideology.

You may have read often on these pages that I don't believe certain sections of pretend 'public health' actually care about health at all. Well, I think this is case closed, don't you? 

Humanity Is No Longer A Priority For the NHS

If you wanted evidence that humanity has departed from the NHS in favour of elitist zealotry and pointless ignorant bullying, you couldn't find a better example than this.

Smoking to be banned on all hospital grounds from next April  

Next year’s NHS contract with hospitals will say no-one should be allowed to smoke in any areas such as car parks.

Car parks. You know, where cars spew out deadly exhaust fumes that can kill in minutes in the wrong circumstances. Remember when it was about the vague 'perils' of secondhand smoke ... in enclosed places? Those days are long gone.

Health ministers have said no-one should have to “walk past a cloud of smoke in order to enter or leave their local hospital”.

A laudable aim, no doubt, if you are setting policy to encourage self-indulgent, snobby and bossy people who have orgasms over interfering in the lives of others for no reason but to inflate their own pathetic egos, but of no benefit to public health whatsoever. Smokers are not going to quit because of bullying like this, if anything it will strengthen their resistance and create mistrust of the medical community.

As anyone who has ever visited a hospital will know, the reason these daft rules are ignored - not just by the public but by staff too - is because not only are they are evil, daft, counterproductive and unnecessary in equal measure, but also the vast majority of people recognise that hospitals are stressful places and there is no will from decent people to poke their nose in and finger-wag some poor sod who may have just lost a relative. Are they really saying here that the answer to someone having a cigarette to soothe their grief is to run over and slap them with a penalty charge notice? Fuck me, what hideous mind came up with that plan?

The slug-like justification above is purely because "walking past a cloud of smoke" is one of the most-used reasons for rancid people on newspaper comments sections - who self-select by gravitating towards articles which get their teeth gnashing - to justify their personal wish for the world to revolve around them. We all know their problem is not actually having to breathe smoke in doorways anyway, it's the existence of people doing something they don’t like. There is no evidence whatsoever that these people are suffering harm. Banning smoking in car parks on this basis makes about as much sense as passing a law to fine people who stop in shop doorways ... which is my personal bugbear.

So it seems that NHS policy is now going to turn its guns against people in stressful situations, despite the real harm and distress it might cause, in order to satisfy some of the most intolerant and hideous people in society.

And it's worse because there is a very simple answer to all this if only the NHS and health professionals could drop their bullying and actually be interested in improving lives. Want to banish people smoking by hospital entrances? Simple, build a smoking shelter away from the entrance, it's not rocket science.

It doesn't even need to cost anything. The government claims it is fully in favour of e-cigarettes as a way to quit smoking, so festoon it with ads for vaping products and get e-cig manufacturers and retailers to pay for it to be built and its upkeep, they would be glad to do so. Put adverts for Samaritans in there too and they could be offering a service to the grieving at the same time. You'd expect highly-paid professionals who work in an industry which is supposedly compassionate to come up with ideas like this, wouldn't you?

But, no, NHS offices are now filled with ideological bullies who would rather slap fines on people at their most vulnerable, pander to vile prodnoses, and ignore innovation which could actually help people switch to safer products which are backed by their own Tobacco Control Plan!

So, we are now in a situation where institutions like Grimsby hospital - which unveiled a sensible and forward-looking policy in October this year - will be forced to tear their newly-installed shelter down in favour of adherence to deliberate stigmatisation based on nothing but knuckle-dragging intolerance. So stupid.

Hospital bosses unveil plan to help patients and visitors give up cigarettes - a smoking shelter near the entrance 

“Peter Reading, Chief Executive at the Trust, said: “We have thought about this long and hard. [...] We need to ... help everyone to get the support they need to help them quit. We’ll be putting information about this support into the shelter, which is supported by the local public health team in North East Lincolnshire, and giving the users details of who they can contact to get help.”

Not that there is any adherence to government advice with this new NHS policy either, because they're not ruling out fining vapers too at some point in the future (emphasis mine).

Supplementary documents say the rule would “not apply at this stage to e-cigarettes” Health Service Journal reported. 

The health service and the NGOs, admin staff and assorted hangers-on appear to have completely forgotten what their role in society is supposed to be. They are paid by our taxes to provide a service which fits in with how people choose to live their lives, not to dictate their personal prejudices on us and impoverish or criminalise people who pay their wages for no reason except their own bigotry. They are the cart, not the fucking horse.

I speak from experience having just over a week ago been placed into the nicest room in the hospital - the relatives room where they sit you down, offer you tea and coffee till you're overflowing, and tell you your loved one is dead. I don't smoke anymore but you just know if someone sparked up there the most pressing problem - for the NHS - would be that you lit a fag rather than that your fucking Dad just died suddenly.

Daft policies like this prove that thinking amongst health professionals about providing a service which works for everyone is an alien concept to the higher echelons of the NHS; that they believe their obsessive zealotry is more important than the people who are unfortunate enough to have to visit a hospital; and that decency and humanity have left their premises long before the smokers they wish to eject have done so. They would rather drive bereaved and distressed smokers onto the street at their hour of heartbreak - not even conceding the car park or their own private car for crying out loud - than provide somewhere humane for them to take it all in.

The people who work in NHS hospitals are caring and compassionate, the people who lead them are the opposite; ignorant, overpaid, heartless and - on the basis of this crap - unimaginative, inhumane and incompetent. 

Let's Make The Harmful Stuff Cheaper

Jesus H Christ!

I've seen some pretty moronic stuff from the tobacco control trough-snorting gravy train in my time but this really takes the biscuit.

I've written before about how this daft idea of forcibly making tobacco companies reduce the level of nicotine is monumentally stupid.

One can only assume that the people endorsing it are either corrupt or mentally compromised. 

The US FDA seems to think this is a great idea though. They will mildly relax regulations (perhaps) around vaping while at the same time taking an innocuous ingredient - nicotine - out of cigarettes but leaving all the other crap in. They couldn't be more crazy if they announced that they were to embark on an expedition to find out where unicorns live. 

This is the end result of decades of tobacco control lunatics having the ear of government.

But take a look at this. Not only do these dangerous maniacs think that lowering nicotine in cigarettes so smokers self-titrate by taking in far more nasties than they would otherwise is a good thing, they seriously recommend making the more lethal option cheaper!

The results indicate that smokers' response to price points when purchasing cigarettes may extend to [low nicotine cigarettes] if these were commercially available. Differential cigarettes prices based on nicotine content may result in voluntary selection of less addicting products.

They actually want to dangle a carrot in front of smokers by making it cheaper to smoke products with less nicotine which they would obviously smoke more of. It is truly staggering how much of a bastard industry tobacco control has become.

The FDA has proposed a rule that would reduce nicotine content in commercially available cigarettes. However, it is not known how smokers may respond in an environment where products of differing nicotine content and of differing prices are available. This study demonstrates that price may be an important factor that could lead smokers to select reduced nicotine products voluntarily, even if those products are rated as inferior or less satisfying.

Yes, and for a smoker, if a cigarette is not satisfying, they will light another one. Good fucking grief.

In 1976, in advance of the roll-out of nicotine patches and gum, Michael Russell wrote that "people smoke for nicotine but they die from the tar".

Now that e-cigs have turned up, the tobacco control mantra - in the US at least - seems to be people smoke for the nicotine, so we'll take that out so we can keep our salaries.

By crikey I hope these people rot for eternity. 

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.   

'Public Health' Crooks

If you thought this place was dormant, you'd be wrong. Yes it's been quiet but - as mentioned previously - there are potentially life-changing things going on at Puddlecote Inc and I'm also not long back from a week on a boat in Norfolk with an angry Scottish ex-squaddie frustrated at not having wifi to talk to his Argentinian girlfriend. Still, I'm a survivor so got back safe and sound.

In the past week, though, the global 'public health' community has been busy removing all possible doubt that it might have anything to do with the public's health. In the run-up to the World Health Organisation's World No-Tobacco day on 31st May, they have been doing their damnedest to ensure that the status quo is protected so they can continue trousering the lovely cash that smokers provide.

Firstly, as reported by Snowdon, not happy with banning its own citizens from using e-cigarettes to quit smoking, Australia is now trying to bully the World Customs Organisation (WCO) into making tobacco harm reduction unaffordable to millions of smokers worldwide.

Last May, Australia proposed that the WCO create a new category (24.04) in Chapter 24 for 'nicotine products for human consumption, not containing tobacco but containing nicotine.' The Aussie government admitted that e-cigarettes are not tobacco products but said that 'they are closely related to tobacco in that they are used as substitutes for tobacco products'(!). 

The WCO Secretariat seems to be sympathetic to this proposal. It appears to wrongly believe that e-cigarettes were developed by the tobacco industry and wants to put all 'new products developed by the tobacco industry as an alternative to traditional cigarettes' in the tobacco category, including those that don't contain tobacco and even those that don't contain nicotine. 

Can you think of anything more evil than this? Even the most blinkered of tobacco controllers concede that e-cigs are safer than smoking, they merely contest to what degree. Yet here is the ultimate prodnosery of Australia not content with merely preventing their own citizens from accessing vaping products, but also forcibly interfering in the affairs of other countries to make sure safer alternatives to smoking are made more difficult to buy worldwide.

Imagine the most disgusting and anti-social neighbour you have ever encountered. You know, the rotten-hearted old crone who would puncture kids' bike tyres for fun and cares not about what happens to the kid as a result? Yep, that's Australia, curtain-twitching on acid, as vile as they come.

Inevitably, the World Health Organisation is complicit.

Last week's document includes a letter from the WHO, thanking the WCO for the invitation to comment and supporting the reclassification.

Well of course they would, because the WHO long since departed from its role of protecting the public's health, it is now just a pitiful parody of the organisation that used to concern itself with preventing disease. Instead it has shut down that part of its operation in favour of attacking legitimate industry. Millions of people are threatened with disease and ill-health while the massed egos and huge salaries of the cretins behind their Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) focus on playground-level politics.

Of course, in an ideal world it would be possible to talk sense into the WHO but that presupposes that they would ever listen to it. This entirely unelected body is 100% unaccountable to all of us despite hoovering up taxes to pay for their expensive shindigs.

What's more, if you try to engage with this disgusting bunch of crooks - because that's what unaccountable cartels are called in any other sector - they simply ignore you.

Take, for example, their latest 'consultation' on non-communicable diseases (do go read here about how this is just a racket to ensure the WHO can steal your money for eternity without improving any nation's health). I put 'consultation' in quote marks because it's nothing of the sort - the WHO has decided it will only listen to organisations which it chooses to.

The New Nicotine Alliance (NNA), for example, decided to respond to their 'consultation' and were promptly ignored as "entities with which WHO does not engage", along with a number of others.

Just like that. No explanation except that the WHO claims that NNA "furthers the interests of the tobacco industry". Only the corrupt WHO could possibly work out how advocating products to replace lit tobacco can be described as that, but then the WHO is not really interested in health.

The NNA has asked for an explanation as to this baffling decision on the part of the WHO but - as is to be expected from an unaccountable perversion of a 'public health' organisation - they have not even had the manners or class to acknowledge the email, let alone respond.

Another included in the black ball list is the Swedish Institute of Tobacco Studies. The pedigree of its director, Lars Ramström, speaks for itself with Google Scholar listing a total of over 1600 academic citations, but I guess they disagree with the WHO's cosy little echo chamber so he has been thrown into the wilderness too.

The WHO FCTC is, as usual, cowering behind their misapplied article 5.3 and hoping no-one will notice what a repulsive gaggle of self-interested troughers they are, and how they are now having an overwhelmingly negative effect on global public health. For the record, the NNA makes it quite clear on their website how they operate.

NNA welcomes donations from individuals and organisations to support our campaigning work. We are however unable to accept such donations from manufacturers and distributors of nicotine products.

With the NNA being a registered charity and staffed by unpaid volunteers, the WHO - a multi-million dollar Goliath by comparison - is showing its complete disregard for the interests of consumers and others who they pretend to exist to protect.

It seems, instead, the WHO FCTC is using a rule it created itself (article 5.3) - which it claims is to advise governments to ignore commercial interests in creating legislation - to instead justify disallowing consumer charities and others from responding to the WHO which, as should be obvious, is not a government considering it has never received a democratic vote in favour of it from anyone in the world.

Unelected. Unaccountable. And making up its own rules of engagement as it goes along. The WHO isn't a health body, it's a fascist, crooked, tax-gobbling global menace.

250 years ago, the term "no taxation without representation" was coined yet here we are in 2018 and the WHO are steadfastly refusing to engage with anyone whose ideas disagree with theirs, despite sucking up multi-million pounds worth of our taxes. They routinely refuse to debate; prohibit free speech; and ban the press from their meetings, all of which are held behind closed doors.

The WHO is as secretive as the Mafia but with lesser morals. We have to wonder why our government sees fit to shovel our taxes to a body which makes banana republic dictators appear a model of transparency by comparison. Maybe some might wish to ask their MP why this is tolerated by Westminster, aren't we all supposed to value transparency and openness these days?

In the meantime, when you see the WHO proudly boasting about their World No-Tobacco Day on Thursday, allow yourself a wry smile knowing that the biggest supporter of traditional tobacco use in the world right now is ... the WHO. 

Crushing Safer Solutions For Profit

Sometimes, you really have to wonder if the whole tobacco thing with governments is just a big sham and that they really do secretly want smokers to continue smoking for the tax revenue.

Yes it sounds very much like a conspiracy theory, but how else do you explain heroically mendacious policies such as this from Korea?

Manufacturers of heat-not-burn (HNB) cigarettes, or heated tobacco products, will be required to put graphic warnings about health risks associated with smoking including cancer, similar to warnings all other cigarette manufacturers currently use. Such products will have to use graphic images of cancer-ridden organs, a much strengthened standard than the current image of a needle, which many have criticized as "unclear and ineffective."

Cancer-ridden organs? Has there been even one case anywhere in the world of cancer caused specifically by heated tobacco? No, of course not. But the lumpen-headed shitgibbons are going to plaster sick images all over the packaging anyway without even a cursory nod to reality.

The government plan seeks to dispel the conventional notion that such products are less harmful and therefore should remain exempt from stringent health policy.

Erm, it's not a 'conventional notion' that needs to be dispelled, for the simple reason that it is 100% true.

Just last week, for example, the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR) published a report on the emissions from HnB products, here is what they came up with.

We show that nicotine yield is comparable to typical combustible cigarettes, and observe substantially reduced levels of aldehydes (approximately 80–95%) and VOCs (approximately 97–99%). Emissions of TPM and nicotine were found to be inconsistent during the smoking procedure. Our study confirms that levels of major carcinogens are markedly reduced in the emissions of the analyzed HNB product in relation to the conventional tobacco cigarettes and that monitoring these emissions using standardized machine smoking procedures generates reliable and reproducible data which provide a useful basis to assess exposure and human health risks.

It seems the only thing that should be corrected in this 'conventional notion' is not that HnB is just "less harmful", but that it is "fuck-my-boots, off-the-launchpad and into the stratosphere less harmful". 80-99% is not just a statistical rounding, it is an abacus-shattering reduction! One which should induce in those who claim they want to save smokers' lives - because that's what they pretend it's all about - multiple orgasms of jubilation. Especially since the uptake in Korea is quite astonishing.

Korea Tobacco recently released its latest financial results, and their conventional tobacco sales make for grim reading, as do sales for all cigarettes in South Korea.

Click to enlarge

Cigarette sales plunged by a massive 10.7% (it was 14.4% the previous quarter) and HnB now accounts for a significant share of the market.

Data from the Ministry of Strategy and Finance showed about 230 million non-HNB cigarette packs were sold in January, while about 20 million HNB packs were sold, accounting for 8 percent of the market, almost a three-fold increase compared to 3 percent seven months earlier. 

So here you have millions of Korean smokers cascading away from tobacco and onto something up to 99% less harmful and their reaction is to slap gory warnings on the products - totally unjustified by the science so far - to deter smokers from switching. Instead they'd rather preserve a blatantly untrue perception that HnB is no different to normal cigarettes.

It's becoming a common theme isn't it? The same story is being played out in Japan where the government has initiated strategies to 'tackle' HnB which has had a dramatic effect on cigarette sales there too, if anything more markedly than in Korea.

Japan Tobacco Q1 results just out, domestic cigarette volume crashes 15.6% as reduced risk products now a whopping 20% of the market https://t.co/jL0JwQZkEA pic.twitter.com/FWLxMEyl2Z

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) May 1, 2018

The National Institute of Public Health (Japan) is one of over 20 independent organisations to have reported that HnB is massively less harmful than smoking ...

“The concentration levels of hazardous compounds in the mainstream smoke of IQOS are much lower than those in conventional combustion cigarettes."

But - as in South Korea - this is being studiously ignored by the Japanese government, which is formulating regulations to ban it in public places.

Meanwhile Sweden is now openly attacking snus - despite boasting by far the lowest smoking prevalence in the developed world because of it - and even came up with some cock and bull story about how parental leave is responsible for their low smoking rates while arguing for the EU ban on snus to be maintained.

And, of course, there are still battles going on globally over e-cigs, with India currently moving to ban them entirely, just after Singapore and Thailand criminalised not just vaping, but also possession of vaping equipment. Yes, you can now be jailed in many jurisdictions for using an e-cig whilst their governments still profit from tobacco being sold widely.

What on Earth is going on?

Well, considering science is being roundly ignored throughout the world, you have to consider two scenarios. Firstly, maybe government really are addicted to the cash that smoking generates and reduced risk products are causing immense problems for their budgets. In other words, their policy would seem to be "keep smoking, we need the money".

Alternatively, the politicians really do think they are doing the right thing and are just appallingly advised. In which case, we have to look at which disgraceful people are advising them. Oh, hello there ideological tobacco controllers, speak of the Devil, eh?

I've said for years that nothing to do with tobacco control or 'public health' surrounding lifestyle choices has ever had anything to do with health. But to see such wilful ideological opposition by people who claim to be health lobbyists against solutions to problems which - to use their own parlance - are killing people, is absolutely vile.

Of course, you may have some other explanation for why these people are conspiring to prohibit far safer products despite overwhelming evidence that they could be harming the public. If so, I'd be very happy to hear it.

Otherwise, I can only hope that there is a higher being who will one day judge these callous bastards harshly for the carnage they are causing in order that they can keep their snouts in the trough. 

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. 

Another Triumph For Repulsive Elitist Snobs

I remember back in 2007 when the English smoking ban came in, the reaction from politicians and health zealots was nauseating.

If it was truly about protecting bar workers' health, they may have said something like "we're really sorry smokers, we realise this is unfair on you but it's something we feel we have to do". But no, Health Secretary of the time Alan Johnson almost punched the air in delight announcing it; Cancer Research UK sent out newsletters to all its donors "rejoicing" in the news; and Deborah Arnott was excited about how smokers had been "exiled to the outdoors". ASH then published a report boasting about how they had connived, cheated and bullied government into abandoning manifesto commitments to accommodate smokers.

Today, we've seen exactly the same thing following this morning's court decision in Scotland to allow minimum alcohol pricing.

The moment it was announced, social media was swamped with arrogant middle class elitists jubilant at how they had stuck it to the working man. It was a landmark decision, a triumph, one 'public health' activist even published a gif of a stick man literally punching the air, while former Scottish CMO - a man I imagine to be quite rich - was said to be over the moon!

Sir Harry Burns, former Chief Medical Officer for Scotland, says he's "absolutely over the moon" at the Supreme Court decision on minimum pricing for alcohol.

— BBC Andrew Kerr (@BBCandrewkerr) November 15, 2017

Not one of them had any concern for low earning moderate drinkers who will now have to struggle to pay for a meagre pleasure, no fucks were given for them. The ecstatic outpourings were not muted to take into account that innocent people will suffer hardship, far from it, it was more like health campaigners were bathing in the poor's misery.

We saw the same ugly disregard when the sugar tax was passed by doughnut-brained MPs, who can forget the euphoria of super-rich Jamie Oliver dancing like he'd just won the lottery at the pleasure he derived from making people pay more for something that he personally doesn't like.

Jamie Oliver had a little #sugartax dance on BBC News https://t.co/mZa1XJLsVf #Budget2016 pic.twitter.com/ZhvV1p5G8p

— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) March 16, 2016

All those celebrating these new immoral restrictions on liberty, property rights and self-autonomy are nothing but repulsive, elitist snobs.

You see, the smoking ban, sugar tax and minimum pricing all have something in common. They are all restrictions on pleasures that are mostly enjoyed by less prosperous families. The middle classes have been sneering at the enjoyment of the less well off for millennia, mostly by railing against the licentious and ungodly morals of the unwashed. But now they cloak it as some kind of care for health and think they can get away with it, but they can't.

Today's vile show of rapture from a wide array of bigots betrays what their real motives are. They are not sorry about the working guy because - in every 'public health' area - it is precisely that guy they set out to bully.

The smoking ban wasn't about bar staff, it was about making life more difficult for the builder who likes to enjoy a pint and a fag. They didn't temper their jubilation in respect for the fact that his life had just got worse, because they were glad his life got worse.

Jamie Oliver - and the ghastly middle class sheep that hang on his every odious utterance - didn't acknowledge that the sugar tax was effectively stealing pocket money from kids, because he was glad he was stealing pocket money from kids who he detests for choosing to drink something he disagrees with.

Likewise today. Health campaigners know very well that minimum pricing will have no effect whatsoever on harmful drinkers. It won't stop or slow down the consumption of alcohol for the small percentage of the population who drink far too much, it will just push some people into poverty.

But then it's not aimed at harmful drinkers, it is aimed at everyone. And with minimum pricing they have come up with a policy that targets only low earners. For these very well off elitists, this is just about perfect. A policy which turns their repugnant distate for the habits of working families into something that will harm the frightful working class ... but won't intrude on their own liking for a cheeky top of the range Merlot.

If Marie Antoinette had been able to create policy in this day and age, minimum alcohol pricing would be the policy she would have chosen.

And you know what the clincher is to prove that this is exactly the aim? Minimum pricing doesn't even deliver an extra penny to the state. All the cash generated goes straight into the pockets of mostly big businesses such as out-of-town supermarkets which 'public health' camapigners - overwhelmingly a left-leaning profession - usually like to demonise.

I have no axe to grind myself about minimum pricing, I will still buy my New Zealand Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc and Peroni at a price that it won't touch, but I know and employ many people for whom it would cause a hardship. The campaigners behind hideous laws like it, though, generally tend to avoid consumers if they can possibly help it. They don't listen to their concerns, they talk at them rather than with them, and they exclude them from policy-making decisions, instead bypassing debate and going straight to government clutching junk science.

Just like the smoking ban and sugar tax before it, minimum alcohol pricing is just a big elitist party zone where the rich get to look down their noses at the poor and stop them doing things that the elite find a bit icky. They don't care that their actions are fundamentally immoral and are not ashamed at celebrating the misery of low earners because they revel in it. Making life less pleasurable for millions of people, predominantly those who don't have much money is exactly the point.

They are repugnant. May some higher being someday make them rot for eternity for being such a sick plague on society.

Must. Defend. The. Policy!

Those of you who use Twitter will have seen that the reason for lack of content this past week was because I was holidaying in the Dordogne. After a week of clear blue skies and temperatures of 30 plus degrees every day, I brought some weather back for you for the bank holiday weekend, you can thank me later.

In the meantime, some fellow jewel robbers have been expressing their disgust at the cruel no vaping policy at Priscilla Bacon Lodge in Norfolk where Anna Raccoon was receiving 'care' before she sadly passed away last week. The hospice has come up with a quite bizarre reason for their heartless e-cig ban.

I would like to assure you that the situation around the use of e-cigarettes was discussed at a Health and Safety meeting at the beginning of August, where consideration was taken into account about the use of e-cigarettes around compressed oxygen supplies.  The British Compressed Gas Association have produced a leaflet on the safe use of e-cigarettes which gives a clear explanation of why they are unsafe around compressed oxygen supplies, and the Trust has to ensure that patients and staff are not put at risk.  That is the reason that patients are asked not to use the devices in a ward situation where there are oxygen supplies. 

So, it was apparently all about the use of oxygen. OK, let's look at that then. Remember we are talking about a tiny, enclosed, low-powered Ego CE4 type device here.

Watch this experiment carried out in 2014 when the scare story about e-cigs and oxygen first surfaced in the media.

As you can see, oxygen on its own cannot burn, it requires a source of ignition, and even exposed terminals from a dripper can't do that on their own. Something else has to be involved to cause a problem, as the video poster says:

"It is possible, if she's got a 40 watt dripper (which sets light to bedding - DP), and her oxygen feed has oxygenated a blanket, for an e-cig to cause a fire. I don't think so myself, I suspect it might be some other source of ignition"

Anna wouldn't have even known what a dripper is, let alone owned one, and I would challenge absolutely anyone to try to light any material with an Ego. It would be like trying to start a barbecue with a TV remote control.

But still, they have their policy and they are obviously determined to stick to it. So what else does the British Compressed Gas Association guidance say? Well, there is this:

There are many electronic devices available which can help enhance patients lives, but their use in close proximity to oxygen should be carefully controlled and the risks of an ignition understood. There have been many media reports about the potential fire hazard of charging and using products, such as phones, tablets, laptops, games consoles etc. These dangers can be exacerbated when using oxygen. Patients are advised not to charge electronic devices in rooms where oxygen is being used or stored.

Hmm, that's odd. Because, you see, the hospice had no problem whatsoever with Anna charging her phone by her bedside; no problem with the rechargable radio that she had on the bed covers; and no problem with the Apple PC that was plugged in under her bed. Nor either the remote keyboard on a tray in front of her from where she wrote emails to me, amongst others.

Nope, everything else that the BCGA said should be prohibited was allowed; it was only the e-cig (not even charged in situ) which was banned. Do you sense an agenda here?

The Lodge's email continued:

Staff always look to accommodate patient’s wishes but, understandably, in a way that meets health and safety, and reasonable compromises are made where possible. 

I would like to assure you that the situation was discussed, and the reasoning explained, with the patient concerned, and the unit already has a solution in place to support patients for whom Vaping, use of e-cigarettes or smoking cigarettes needs to continue.

Wouldn't it be interesting to find out what their idea is to "accommodate patient's wishes" in this situation? You see, in palliative care, centres like Priscilla Bacon Lodge are allowed to offer a smoking room for terminally ill patients, let alone somewhere they can vape. The reasoning behind that was given in this evidence to a parliamentary select committee at the time the law was drafted.

[T]hose receiving palliative care, are unlikely to suffer any disadvantages to their health by smoking and behaviour modification will have no affect on the prognosis of their disease.

So was Anna offered the "solution in place to support patients for whom Vaping, use of e-cigarettes or smoking cigarettes needs to continue"? No, of course not, they just confiscated it. There was apparently talk of her being wheeled outside to vape at one point when a film crew - which was probably there to cover the story of her general election candidature - had come to call, but it never happened, of course.

The answer to why they didn't could be contained in the guidance from that font of all knowledge about palliative care, the British Compressed Gas Association, that Priscilla Bacon employees seem to value so much.

If it is not possible to remove the patient from a high oxygen environment, it may be best to consider non-heated nicotine sources such as nicotine replacement therapy (NRT).

Well, it was perfectly possible to remove her from that environment if that was truly the problem, but they didn't. Their only 'solution' is NRT, isn't it?

The Trust's dignity policy talks about their commitment to "support people with the same respect you would want for yourself or a member of your family" and to enabling "people to maintain the maximum possible level of independence, choice and control", but at the end of the day they couldn't be arsed to take her to a space - indoor or outdoor - where she could vape. Easier just to confiscate the thing, eh?

Because, you see, they have a policy.

H/T SC & The Blocked Dwarf via email

Cruel But Sadly Not Unusual

Last week I mentioned having been gadding about Britain for a few days, including a day trip to Norwich. I had driven up there on August 2^nd to see fellow blogger Anna Raccoon, about whom I wrote this last year.

Her content has been quite simply awesome. Astute and incredibly rigorous, she has attracted the respect and admiration of journalistic commentators, and regularly put many in the news profession to shame with her attention to detail and almost bloodhound-like determination to verify sources and evidence. 

Although long time readers here will mostly remember her partnering up with Old Holborn to spring Nick Hogan from prison, her articles have often been electric and searing on extremely spiky subjects. Tackling stories such as Savile from a position of accuracy rather than hysteria is not an easy thing to do, and her weaving of personal accounts into her writing - as she has done brutally in recent days - is as brave as it is hypnotically compelling.

Well, as many of you will know from reading her blog, she has been suffering from a rare but virulent form of cancer which has attacked her spine and left her paralysed and bed-bound (though still passionate and determined enough to fight the general election in June).

The Blocked Dwarf at Grandad's place explains this in detail.

Anna’s spine is what doctors refer to as ‘oh dear, not good’. Even without the BIG RED ARROW I put on [the scan picture]; even without being able to identify what is bone, what is muscle and what is nerves you can see that there is something amiss. If not, go to Specsavers. 

The Raccoon explained it thus: her doctors and carers have been puzzled why hoisting her onto the commode had been causing her ‘some discomfort’ (doctor speak for ‘PAIN’). The MRI shows that something has dissolved the ‘knobbly bits’ (doctor speak for, I assume, ‘transverse process’ and ‘arches’) of her verterbrae (T1/T2 I think but I still count on my fingers). Those boney knobbly bits protect the spinal chord which now lies open. Do I need to tell anyone that exposed spinal chord is not a good thing? Long and short the doctors are now puzzled how she has managed to live so long with being turned, manhandled and hoisted daily. 

The slightest movement of her body below the shoulders could kill her.
So at the moment they are giving her doses of an anaesthetic to paralyse her in her sleep at night so she doesn’t toss and turn and wake up dead. She can’t be hoisted on to the commode, nor even have a bed pan shoved under her and so: 

“I literally have to crap in the bed” [sic] 

Don’t forget she is still perfectly lucid, her head is clear and so she can fully enjoy the utter loss of every last scrap of dignity every single time the team of nurses have to come and roll her onto her side, keeping her in position, then clean her down. Of course the fact that the meds and the drugs haven’t destroyed her mind is a good thing but….
Worse still the exposed spinal chord also means she probably won’t be going home anytime too soon, which she desperately wants to do. 

And today G had to bring in the right tools to cut her wedding ring off her finger. The steroids have caused her fingers to swell. Yes it is only a piece of metal,’rose gold’ actually, but that bit of metal means something to her and G, they’re a bit old fashioned.

As you can see, she has already been suffering immensely with her dignity being stripped away by disease, and - since she is, to be blunt, very close to dying - had been confined to a bed in Norwich's Priscilla Bacon Lodge which is where I went to meet her. We had a good chinwag for a few hours, during which she described truly astonishing behaviour by the staff which not only compounded the indignity, but was also unbelievably cruel!

You see, she switched from smoking to vaping three years ago, and had a small Ego CE4 type device. For those who don't know what that is, it looks something like this.

It is not very powerful and gives out a tiny amount of vapour. But - and I think you can guess what is coming next - the hospice told her she couldn't use it. More than that, though, they did it in a way that was condescending and offensive. Here is how she described it by email.

What happened I found out in stages - apparently someone saw me at the week-end refilling the vape from the 'sipped case' - and told them. This evening a nurse walked over to me me and said, 'what a sweet little teddy' and proceeded to play with him - 'Oh do you keep your pen in there, good heavens no its a vape'. It was so odd that I didn't twig at first. Well, I got the rules and regulations read to me in such a patronising tone of voice.  

But it was just the way it was done, pretending to 'find' the vapeur like that, it just added to all the electricians checking plugs, and signing disclaimers for sandwiches, and everything else, I'm not a bloody child, I'm a grown woman whose been more independent than most of them can begin to imagine, and now suddenly I've lost the use of my legs and I'm treated like I'm 3 years old. 

This is apparently how staff at a hospice (run by MacMillan, according to Anna) treat someone in her dying days. Someone who worked at a high level at the Court of Protection for years as a Lord Chancellor's Visitor; has a double first class honours degree in law; is respected by top journalists for her striking writing and attention to detail; and is a Medical Claims Lawyer who has spent the last couple of months appearing regularly in the media using her impending death to campaign for more funding for the NHS.

They even said that they would (taking advantage of her paralysis) put it just out of her reach. How caring, huh? The senior doctor was called, Dr Wilkins, who explained that as there wasn't evidence to prove that e-cigs were safe or unsafe, they were banned on health grounds. On health grounds! For a woman who is days from dying in excruciating pain from cancer.

She is on a regime of intravenous Ketamine - the drug designed to stun a rampaging elephant - and Oxycodeine, but apparently nicotine is not to be tolerated.

Because, you see, they have a policy.

Now, I made enquiries and found out that they also have a dignity policy which should be adhered to in situations like this. Here is part of what it says on the one for Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust.

- Support people with the same respect you would want for yourself or a member of your family
- Enable people to maintain the maximum possible level of independence, choice and control

I'll leave you to make your minds up as to whether they have followed the dignity policy in this case, but considering the government's Tobacco Control Plan - released last month - stated that "e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation and should not routinely be included in the requirements of an organisation’s smokefree policy", you'd have thought that in these circumstances their ideological and ignorant smokefree rules could, and should, have been relaxed in favour of preserving Anna's dignity.

It seems a Director of Public Health agreed, and offered to speak to Dr Wilkins to "advise" him seeing as he is woefully ignorant on the subject. So I left that Wednesday having given Anna the DPH's number to pass on - along with a load of Nicoccino and some of my stash of Zyn - safe in the knowledge that some sense would prevail.

Not so though. I visited her again this weekend and she told me that the next day they had dismantled another vape pen that her husband - the awesome Mr G - had brought in for her. They unscrewed the top so she couldn't possibly use it and took it to the property office in this envelope.

Now, either Dr Wilkins didn't bother to ring the DPH - someone who vastly outranks him - or he did ring but decided to completely disregard the advice. You have to both marvel, and be disgusted, at the astonishing arrogance behind that.

Either way, it illustrates the disgraceful nature of the fanatical zealotry that tobacco control has fostered in the war against smoking nicotine. The 'smokefree' mantra has become a shibboleth that drives a coach and horses through tolerance, compassion and common decency.

I often remind you that we are on the side of the angels here and the nanny statists deserve a demonic eternity or even prison time, but when 'caring' professionals think this is the decent way to treat someone with possibly days left to live, they make my argument for me.

I left Anna on Saturday - after sharing glasses of pink champagne sent by one of the many admirers of her work - as the sun sank over the river Yarm and boats sailed past the riverside window of the annex her true hero of a husband had built for her last days. She is as comfortable as it is possible to be in her situation, and at least is now able to vape while she waits for the inevitable. I find it quite incredible that anyone would think it compassionate to deny her that tiny pleasure for the sake of an ignorant and arguably indefensible policy. 

Cowardice In The Face Of Bravery

I have consistently said on these pages - since around 2010 - that e-cigs have the potential to show up the cant and oleaginous hypocrisy of the tobacco control industry. There have been numerous examples of this over the years but a spectacular episode this week in Australia has left all others in the shade.

As Snowdon has remarked, so exasperated are Australia's tobacco control extremists at the relentless advance of vaping, that they have now taken to slandering ordinary vapers and implying they are - every single of them - nothing but shills for the tobacco industry.

It has come about since the Australian government invited submissions to a public inquiry which, quite reasonably, over a hundred vapers accepted and told their stories of how they switched from tobacco to e-cigs (see the inquiry report here). Faced with an avalanche of common sense which threatens to encourage e-cigs to be legalised down under, serial merchant of doubt Simon Chapman started slinging mud and articles such as this emerged in many Australian news organisations.

Exposed: big tobacco's behind-the-scenes 'astroturf' campaign to change vaping laws

World renowned tobacco control expert [sic] Simon Chapman, an emeritus professor at the University of Sydney, said Philip Morris and other interest groups were "astroturfing" - trying to create the illusion of a big grass-roots pro-vaping movement that does not really exist.

This is a quite remarkable direct attack on the public by the geriatric industry-hater. There is absolutely no reason why vapers should not be submitting their stories, in fact it would be exactly what the government would want to see. And, as Terry Barnes points out in the Speccie, public engagement is to be applauded however it comes about.

These people don’t lightly come out of the woodwork, but this is a big thing for them.

Indeed it is. Possession of nicotine is (stupidly) a crime in Australia, so it is incredibly brave of these people to respond in such a way to a consultation such as this. For many, it will have been the very first time they have engaged with the political process, yet Chapman - in an act of cowardice which is in direct contrast to the bravery of the vapers he is attacking - has attempted to slander and demonise them for doing so.

Like me, they share views unpalatable to the public health wowsers: vaping is almost certainly a far lower risk activity than tobacco smoking, the scientific evidence in its favour is mounting, and that if we are serious about harm reduction we should follow Britain, Canada and New Zealand and legalise nicotine vaping on a sensibly regulated basis, not prohibit it as Australia does now.  That they’re prepared to declare themselves should be respected, not denigrated. 

How they became aware of the inquiry is neither here nor there.

Quite.

It is also worth noting that none of the ordinary vapers who responded will have been paid for doing so, yet Chapman has made a career out of being a professional anti-smoker, as have all other gobshites who publish articles which try to tarnish e-cigs. So for him to bandy the term 'astroturf' around is quite astounding.

This is, pathetically, yet another piece of evidence that proves many in the tobacco control industry have no care for health whatsoever. They simply hate the tobacco industry, despise smokers, and are frantic with anger that some have escaped punishment by their hideous and sadistic 'control' methods. If you don't wear the hair shirt and suffer, they will despise you even more than if you carry on smoking.

As Carl Phillips brilliantly identified in 2015, Chapman and his lumpen-brained hangers-on in Australia are nothing but vile, bitter extremists.

The test for anti-tobacco extremism is the answer to the following question: If you could magically change the world so that either (a) there was no use of tobacco products or (b) people could continue to enjoy using tobacco but there was a cheap magic pill that they could take to eliminate any excess disease risk it caused, which would you choose? Anyone who would choose (a) over (b) takes anti-tobacco to its logical extreme, making clear that they object to the behavior, not its effects.

Tobacco control had been reaching increasingly high levels of indecency in the past decade or so, but with this disgusting attack from Chapman, they have raised the bar even further.

He and those who think like him are a real danger to society in more ways than one, so well done to anyone who submitted to the Australian inquiry; we can only hope that the Australian government do the right thing and treat his pathetic smears with the utter contempt that they deserve. 

The March Of Bigotry

Back in December 2015, The Soviet Republic of Brighton Council dropped plans to ban smoking outdoors on beaches and in parks due to the fact that responses to a public consultation told them to stop being a bunch of puritanical knob-gobblers and go do something worthwhile instead.

They didn't.

 Via The Brighton Argus:

CAFES, restaurants and pubs with outside eating areas will be asked to consider introducing a voluntary smoking ban.

Hopefully, those with outside areas will consider the idea, then politely tell Brighton Council to fuck off.

It follows a consultation run by the council in 2015 asking people for their views about smoking in public spaces outside. 

The majority of all those who responded agreed it was anti-social to smoke where people are eating and drinking.

They may well have done, but it's not any of the council's business until they waive business rates for such venues, buy the stock, maintain the premises, pay the staff, and make investments in things such as - oh I dunno - outdoor smoking areas.

You see, if it was advantageous for cafes, restaurants and pubs to ban smoking in their outdoor areas, they would have done so by now. If, at some time in the future, it becomes advantageous to these businesses to ban smoking outdoors, they will do so. The very last people who should have any input into such a position is a local authority.

Customers vote with their feet, not by responding to public consultations. And, apart from some guy in Leeds who runs a children's playgroup which just happens to sell alcohol, pubs especially know very well that it's not a good idea to turn away 40-50% of your regular customers on the basis of some fantasy bollocks about smoking outdoors being dangerous to others ... which it is not, and will never be.

Besides, there are many things that are anti-social in pub, cafe and restaurant gardens, and the most anti-social of all is screaming bloody kids! If mere irritation is the criteria for a council to come wading in with its size 12s then a ban on kids, I think many would agree, should be top of the target list.

Twelve businesses, including cafés, restaurants and pubs from the North Laine, Brighton Marina and city park areas, were interviewed by officials about the scheme. 

Ten said they supported the concept of the scheme, although two had concerns about potentially losing loyal customers. 

The other businesses did not support the idea, saying smokers were generally conscious of smoking around children.

If I ran one of the businesses which being interviewed I'd be quietly licking my lips, and mentally counting the extra till receipts, at the prospect of others in my industry falling for this kind of virtue-signalling crap; it's not often your competitors voluntarily throw their loyal customers in your direction after all.

David Sewell, who runs Brighton’s Pavilion Gardens café, said: “I’ve never smoked in my life but you have to be aware of what customers want. 

“If there was a blanket ban enforced it would be a lot easier."

Ah, the old level playing field, eh? Of course it would, but it's not illegal and there is no health issue. So it's clear from the fact that businesses allow smoking in their outdoor areas that it is financially profitable for them to do so. And as there is no chance of a mandatory ban, only a voluntary one, let's hope the council gets told to take a long walk off the end of that not so long pier of theirs.

As a side note, isn't it curious that these issues only crop up in the summer when anti-smokers start grumbling about smokers enjoying their habit outdoors? When was the last time you heard one of the fake-coughing, exaggerated hand-waving types complaining that their enjoyment of the icy December air is being polluted by smokers who are stuck out there all year round? You have to be one grotesque human being to object to smokers enjoying one of very few places left for them to smoke, yet check the comments and you will see many having the chutzpah to call smokers "inconsiderate" for not respecting that the world revolves around effete, lily-livered, intolerant, bigoted bedwetters whose life comes crashing down if they have to change seat when they get a whiff of a few wisps of smoke.

If they don't want to be inconvenienced by smoke, they have the inside of every pub, cafe and restaurant in the country to choose from. Perhaps they should get back inside to an atmosphere which ensures that they never have to wash their hair or clothes again, and leave the outdoors in summer to people who have learned the admirable skill of living and letting live.

And, if you are a Brighton resident, congratulations for living in a town where this kind of irrelevant bullying is all your councillors have to contend with. It must be an idyllic place. 

An Object Lesson In Snobbery

A couple of repulsive snobs have been whining in The Times about the government's obesity strategy. It is probably the most draconian in the world, but that's still not enough for these two interfering weasels.

Theresa May dropped crucial features of the childhood obesity strategy because she does not have children, a leading female restaurateur has suggested. 

Thomasina Miers, 41, claimed that if the prime minister had had children she would not have allowed measures such as banning junk food advertising and preventing supermarkets pushing sugary foods at children to be dropped.

Rudely bringing May's childless status into the debate has led to condemnation from some quarters, but this is far more offensive in your host's humble opinion.

“Part of me felt that if you had had children you would not have done that, because it is so important that our children eat [healthy food],” she told an audience at the Hay Festival.

Erm, there is absolutely nothing stopping you from feeding your children healthy food, Thomasina. Oh, but you don't mean your children, do you? You mean other people's children, isn't that right you meddling fuck?

Here's a plan, Thomasina, why don't you look after your children, and we will look after ours. OK?

She's not alone in being a tedious, pinch-lipped prodnose though, there's this rancid curtain-twitcher as well.

Rosie Boycott, who works with various food organisations and advised Boris Johnson on food strategy when he was mayor of London, said that the prime minister appeared to have “kicked out the bits about children”. 

Ms Boycott added: “She [Mrs May] would say that she doesn’t want to be part of the Nanny State but I think that if you can’t be a nanny to your children . . . It should be the same as saying ‘do not run across the road.’ ”

Rosie, Rosie, Rosie. You can be a nanny to your children as much as you like, there is no law against it. But when you say "our children" you're being an intrusive snooper just like Thomasina, aren't you?

Rosie, you nanny your children, and leave the decision whether we want to nanny ours up to us, eh? When you start providing for my kids' food and paying for their upbringing you can decide how they live. Until then, have a Coke and a smile and go fuck yourself.

The double act ended on a flourish as the piece came back to Thomasina adding some stunning ignorance to her obnoxious prying into the lives of others.

Ms Miers said that while she did not believe in “big government” she thought it “has got to have more balls” adding: “I feel that this stranglehold that the big supermarkets have on our food system is not helping. People have to have access to fresh fruit and vegetables; it is mad that they don’t.

Have you ever seen a supermarket which isn't packed to the gunwales with fresh fruit and veg? Where does this preposterous woman shop? Venezuela?

It is astonishing that these vacuous pecksniffs believe they have the right to dictate how others live their lives, but it beggars belief that governments tend to indulge their vile snobbery. The only problem this Times article highlights is the one of legions of people like Thomasina and Rosie poking their unwanted noses into everyone else's business.

Far from being condemned, Theresa may should be congratulated for not caving in to shrill, pompous, loathsome shitehawks such as these two.