Aussie Tobacco Control Worse Than North Korea

Swivel-eyed anti-tobacco extremist Simple Simon has been dismissing the notion that eye-watering sin taxes might have societal negative consequences.

@twtrrr smokers forced to quit? Not sure even North Korea does that ...

— Simon Chapman AO (@SimonChapman6) October 12, 2015

The debate is occurring because Australia last month slapped a third 12.5% tax increase (applied every three months) on tobacco, pushing the cost of a pack of 30 to AU$32, around £16.

It's quite clear that at that level of cost, it is the less well off who will be most likely to be priced out of smoking. Unless, that is, they make savings elsewhere on their household budgets. It's a problem Simple Simon doesn't care much about.

@twtrrr So you'd like to lower cost of smokes to "help" those on low incomes. What a perverse way to be helpful. Job for you @BATA_Media

— Simon Chapman AO (@SimonChapman6) October 12, 2015

Alleviating financial pressure on the poor is apparently "a perverse way to be helpful" according to Chappers, because his - and his tobacco control chums' - only definition of "help" is to bully people into stopping doing things they personally disapprove of. If that means people are forced to stop smoking because they can't afford it - even if they love tobacco and would never choose to - it can only be a good thing for tobacco controllers like Mr Chapman.

John Stuart Mill had something to say about this 150 years ago in his treatise On Liberty:

“Every increase of cost is a prohibition, to those whose means do not come up to the augmented price.”

By this he means that every marginal increase in sin taxes ensures that someone, somewhere, is forced to quit because they can't afford it anymore, which is de facto prohibition. This is self-evident and entirely the point of Australia's huge tobacco tax hikes; they want smokers to be unable to afford to smoke and therefore be prohibited by price.

Chappers obviously doesn't accept that he and his profession are promoting more totalitarian policies than those of North Korea, so let's consider a scenario.

Imagine a smoker chooses not to quit fags and cuts back on food instead to such an extent that he and his family risk immediate health problems, even death. Would Chapman say "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population"? Well of course not, he is a philanthropist, nothing could be further from his mind. Could it?

But that is effectively what Australia's tobacco control policy - guided by Mr Chapman and his equally hideous colleagues - is designed to do. It is a direct attack on individual choice. Of course, Chappers would argue that smokers do indeed have a choice, they can choose to quit, or die (Kim Jong-Un would be proud). However, since no-one would choose to die, the only option is to be forced to quit. He can play with words as much as he likes, but Australia's tobacco control policy is a system of enforced prohibition, with the poorest going first.

As Chapman himself says, even North Korea is not that evil, which makes him and his ilk worse. Hey, don't blame me for pointing this out, Simon said it himself!

The Maddest Man On The Planet

Apologies for not being around much today, been too busy enjoying Halloween with my kids and those who have visited the doorstep tonight.

Perhaps I should have been writing instead as it turns out I've actually been mortally wounding every last one of them.

Thus, suggests Prof. John Banzhaf of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), adults should warn their children this Halloween, and also on other days, against visiting, going to parties, or playing in homes where adults smoke, especially in their presence.

Yes, this is the same ASH whose British arm, via our taxes, are funded by Cameron's government.

I've invited ASH UK to divorce themselves from his insanity before, but received no reply. One must presume, then, that they are quite happy to be associated with probably the maddest man on the planet.

Hey, Dockrell, you've got my e-mail. I'll give you another chance. Would you care to distance your Shoreditch operation from the notion that a kid standing briefly at a smoker's door is in mortal danger on Halloween?

Think of the funding, sunshine. No-one, not even anti-smokers, are happy paying for absurdity, after all.

H/T Taking Liberties

Hate Minds Think Alike

A little short of time this evening as I've selflessly volunteered my services in helping a local sports team get their season off to a smooth start. Well, I say selflessly, but I'm sure there will be a couple of beers in it for me - I'm notoriously cheap like that.

In the meantime though, the Angry Exile has found this rather grimy video on YouTube - click through for his thoughts on the matter.

Now, it's not clear whether this ad has ever been aired, but that's not to excuse the kind of sick mind which made the film.

Having said that, they're not alone, as I've mentioned previously. The two offerings below are by ASH New Zealand, and their equally ill counterparts in Dubai (who, astoundingly, chose to publish their ad on the sixth anniversary of the Twin Towers collapsing).



To finger-waggers the world over, 9/11 wasn't so much an unspeakable act of evil, more a handy occurrence on which to exercise their mentally disturbed fantasies.

Researchers Discover A Stool Pigeon, Quite Literally

You've got to hand it to anti-tobacco lunatics - their commitment to the cause of haranguing smokers, every day, and in every way, is quite remarkable.

Nothing is too difficult or objectionable ... not even rummaging through shit. And not just any old shit either, we're talking meconium here.

Meconium, the dark and tarry stools passed by a baby during the first few days after birth, can be used to determine how much the mother smoked, or if she was exposed to tobacco smoke during pregnancy.

Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental Health measured tobacco smoke metabolites in meconium samples from 337 babies, finding that they correlated well with reported smoke exposure and other markers of tobacco smoke exposure.

Parents will know all about meconium. The intensely acrid, almost radioactive, ammonia-like greeny-brown stuff which nature injects into babies as its little sadistic test on new mums and dads. If you can withstand that without running the little 'un down to the nearest adoption agency, you possess the requisite mettle to survive the next 18 years of your life feeling like you're forever being run through a crushed-glass encrusted mangle.

For those who have never experienced meconium, it doesn't just emit an odour, it launches a psychotic frenzied assault on your senses. When you breathe in, it instantly flays the membrane from the inside of your nostrils, performs Riverdance on your optic nerve and detonates a landmine on your ear drums, before lobbing rotten prawns into your stomach and drumming on your diaphragm with a wooden club.

Yet the researchers took 337 examples of this stuff for analysis. Not just one nappy load from each kid either, oh no. All of it, according to their report [pdf].

Meconium stools were collected throughout the hospital stay, until the first milk stool appeared. Study staff pooled meconium samples from diapers into polyethylene containers using a spatula.

Then they put it all in a fridge to keep its violent properties as fresh as possible, before delving into it with gusto.

And for why? Well, as the authors state, smoke exposure in pregnancy is "under-reported". That is, people have learned that if they deny smoking or being around smokers, doctors leave them alone, and this just won't do for anti-smoking fanatics. Consequently, they need to come up with an irrefutable tell-tale sign of exactly what smoke-related activities have been going on, and by collecting and getting elbow-deep in noxious shit, they think they have found it.

Thanks to this newly-discovered - quite literal - stool pigeon, a rich new seam of potential hectoring is now exploitable.

In the future, if a new mum says they haven't been anywhere near smoke during pregnancy, her doctor may ask her to bring a bag of her kid's shit to prove it.

A Special Kind Of Heartlessness *Updated*

Frank Davis has stumbled upon this clip on Facebook and expressed his shock. Assuming the video is genuine and not an elaborate set-up, behaviour like this certainly is weapons grade heartlessness, is it not?

Original here

UPDATE: The Coventry Telegraph are covering the story.

UPDATE 2: And so are The Sun

If All Else Fails ... Terrify

Iain Dale is making a big deal out of the Sunday Times article on leaflets Labour have sent to cancer sufferers, and rightly so.

Cancer patients who received the personalised cards, sent with a message from a breast cancer survivor praising her treatment under Labour, said they were “disgusted and shocked”, and feared that the party may have had access to confidential health data.

Labour sources deny that the party has used any confidential information.

Well, that's all right then ...

... actually, no it damn well isn't. Sorry, Labour, but I'm all out of trust in you.

I don't know why that could be, perhaps it is the refusal to honour 2005 manifesto promises (or the court case undertaken to fight against honouring them), maybe it's the ritual denial of what we all know to be true, or it could be the ignorance shown towards its people by a party which values only its own survival.

Labour's claim that they haven't targeted cancer sufferers is hollow. I simply don't believe it.

In the Labour constituency of Sherwood, Nottinghamshire, two of a group of eight women friends received the breast cancer card. They are the only two to have undergone cancer treatment.

In the marginal east London constituency of Poplar and Limehouse, the card was sent to a 44-year-old television producer who had a potentially cancerous lump that turned out to be a cyst. She appeared to be the only person who received the mailshot among 50 neighbours.

Dizzy explains the supposed method used, but as he implies, it just doesn't wash.

[...] it was done by using anonymous data mashup from Experian to work out roughly where someone with cancer lives. They hold anonymous hospital data with postcodes and medical diagnosis. Think of it like a shotgun being targeted at a door but the pellets spread out and hit many targets in a specific area.

Unless, of course, the shotgun contains cancer-seeking pellets.

In fact, the only way that Labour can possibly be telling the truth is if they are merely naive recipients of an almost 'perfect' list of targets.

The cards are being distributed by Ravensworth, part of Tangent Communications, which has won accounts sending out mail for the Department of Health and Cancer Research UK.

[Damian Bentley, managing director of Tangent] failed to respond to a list of questions on how the addresses of the cancer victims were obtained.

Christ! I think he should bloody well start answering questions sharpish, don't you? Time to get someone like, I dunno, the Information Commissioner, to ask them.

And all this without mentioning what a quite sick electoral tactic it is to use cancer as a political tool.

Labour have bullied the public into submission on a wide array of issues under the veiled threat of harm, paedohysteria, cancer and death before ... but this is a whole new level of evil, self-centred arrogance.

And there was me believing that torching a fat boy effigy in the town square was as low as these maggots could go.

UPDATE: NickM describes it perfectly - "Politics as a protection racket"

Burn The Fat Bastard!

Unhealthy! Unclean! Untermensch!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Niemoller has never been more relevant.

I See Dead Polars

I'm getting seriously worried about the mental health of the enviro-nutters. It seems they have developed a perverse pleasure from the virtual slaughter of polar bears. In November it was Plane Stupid, now Greenpeace are at it.



Someone call the men in white coats.

Proffer The Children

If you asked someone the answer to a sum, say 176 x 3, and they took about a minute to answer, would that make them more astute than you?

If you asked them to name three members of the shadow cabinet and they couldn't, would you believe them to be more informed about current affairs than you?

If you asked them what their thoughts were on the relative merits of capitalism and socialism, and they giggled and told you they didn't have a clue what you were talking about, would you consider them to be someone who should be capable of guiding your opinions?

Probably not.

So why the fuck do the government believe that we should take instant heed of a bunch of kids who have been fed one-sided leading questions by Ed Balls and his departmentalists?

We hope that our thoughts are listened to, and that they mean as much to you as they do to us. We are serious and we are passionate, and we want change. You can and must act now…

Is it really any wonder that the backlash to the Climate Change debate is so vitriolic when this is the level of debate that we are afforded?

When all the abuse, emotional blackmail, threats and intimidation fail, this administration resort to using our own children ... at our fucking expense.

Labour. You are the most disgusting, manipulative, perverse, psychotic, morally corrupt bastards ever to set foot in the Palaces of Westminster.

Go fuck yourselves with a rusty chainsaw, you disgust me. All of you.

H/T Obo

UPDATE: Apols to Man Widdicombe who, I just noticed, spotted it earlier.

You Been Telling Porkies, WWF?

Just a quickie.

Remember the WWF 9/11 video that Mr Eugenides posted which was quickly taken down?

Remember that the WWF denied they had anything to do with the ad at all?

Remember they were going after anyone who posted anything like this about it?

Well, it seems they have changed their tune.

After the WWF appeared to initially deny approving the ad, DDB Brasil and the WWF hammered out a statement posted in Portuguese on both groups' Brazilian websites Wednesday afternoon apologizing for the ad and attributing it to "the inexperience of some professionals on both sides, and not bad faith or disrespect toward American suffering."

The statement continued, "WWF-Brasil and DDB Brasil reaffirm that the ad never should have been created, approved or run. They deeply regret that this happened, and apologize to everyone who has been offended."

They all still deny that they knew anything about the video though. Apparently, it was just a strange coincidence that someone managed to condense their idea into a perfect 30 second slot with professional production.



So that's all right, then.

Towering Insensitivity

The Mail has picked up on this ad Mr Eugenides ran with yesterday.

Exploiting the horror of 9/11: American fury at WWF ad showing a hundred planes poised to collide with New York

Tasteless, as Mr E quite rightly concluded. So much so that the WWF are desperately trying to distance themselves from it.

Pah! WWF pussies. Anti-smoking organisations have no such qualms about exploiting 9/11 for their own particular niche of scaremongery. Like this effort from ASH New Zealand in 2008.


Or this, which appeared in an Arab newspaper ... on 11th September 2007.


Tasteless? Not to the swivel-eyed tobacco controllers. For them, disaster is merely a delicious opportunity.

Missing The Target

Some disgusting shit has done what disgusting shits do. That is, something quite disgusting.

A national sports retail chain has apologised for selling a Manchester United shirt bearing a Hillsborough insult.

The fan paid £55 for the shirt and the slur to be printed about the 1989 disaster which killed 96 Liverpool FC fans.

On it, he chose the number 96 and under it the words "Not Enough". Above the number were the letters YSB - which stands for You Scouse B*****ds. The man's Facebook page was shut down.

Quite right too. I hope someone rips his balls off with a rusty pair of pliers for being such an evil waste of DNA.

As someone who spent many a Saturday, as a youngster, helplessly hemmed in by fencing at high-profile football matches. And having been at an FA Cup semi-final just twelve months prior to the Hillsborough disaster, it often crosses my mind that, in hindsight, all of us who attended football were in a fair amount of danger back then.

Anyone who makes a team rivalry point on the back of people who died in such a tragedy is a sick cunt, pure and simple (no apology for terminology).

However, after Boris Johnson's piece in 2004 about Liverpudlians wallowing in 'victim status', comments like this really aren't helping to dispel the sentiment.

Sports Direct said the employee who marked up the shirt did not know what the message meant. But Margaret Aspinall, whose son James, 18, was killed at Hillsborough, said she did not believe that.

Mrs Aspinall, chairman of the Hillsborough Family Support Group, said: "I think Sports Direct are worse than the guy who wanted it put on the back of his shirt. Printing that message is like inciting trouble, it is an absolute disgrace and Sports Direct should be ashamed.

Sorry? A sports clothing firm with 470 shops making thousands of transactions per day, who instantly apologised and contacted Facebook to close this guy's account once they realised what had happened, are worse than him?

And is it really so unbelievable that an employee would have not understood what YSB stands for? The Hillsborough disaster was in 1989, a full 20 years ago. The average age of a Sports Direct shop worker may only be a tad higher than that, surely. When I was 20, I was completely unaware of what Aberfan signified. Just a thought.

I can't even begin to imagine the pain that Margaret and Jimmy Aspinall went through on that day in April 1989, and the weeks, months and years that followed. I have read extensively about Hillsborough and the disgraceful denial of justice that followed. As a parent myself, I have been moist-eyed reading books like this on the subject, just as I was rapt and sombre during the memorial coverage earlier this year. I sympathise entirely, I really do.

However, Sports Direct have acted swiftly, responsibly and with compassion. They certainly don't deserve to be ranked lower than a rancid sicko who thinks it a bit of a jolly to piss on the memory of 96 innocent Liverpool fans. Mrs Aspinall's response to Sports Direct and their employee (who may well be very cut up about their inadvertent mistake) is quite wrong.

And what's more, the low-life shit who caused the fuss in the first place, has now ensured that non-offensive personalisation of football shirts is denied to responsible Sports Direct customers everywhere. For good.

"As a result, Sports Direct has taken immediate action and changed the administration policy for printing football shirts across its store network. With immediate effect, it will only allow printing of current football players names and numbers on football shirts."

Such does life deteriorate and pander to the whims of the sickest in society (see Huntley and CRB hysteria). Can we not stop allowing these people to win, and singling out the wrong targets for attack?