Cry Me A River

Still incredibly busy at Puddlecote Inc so, in the absence of time to write anything tabloid myself, do go have a read of this article on the BBC website about the plight of anti-smokers compelled to use smokey beer gardens. Arm yourself with a hanky in case you shed a tear or two for the poor dears, won't you?

"Sometimes it's like stepping out into a mist," complains Barbara Harpham, national director of Heart Research UK and a strong advocate of the anti-smoking laws.

Just yer average impartial pub-goer, then.

"The majority of people don't like smoking but when they go outside it's imposed on them."

Imposed on them in the sense that they are strong-armed to the pub against their will, before being whipped with a cat o' nine tails out of the legislated safety of the plush interior into the smoke-filled danger of the garden. Doesn't your heart just bleed?

It's a situation that frustrates those who would rather dine or drink in unpolluted fresh air.

I bet you're welling up by now, aren't you?

"If people want to smoke outdoors they should be able to, but you don't want kids going where there are people smoking," says Harpham.

Because there are simply no other places for a poor obsessive anti-smoker to take kids in the summer except a pub beer garden, of course.

As a result, she says, families are often deterred from visiting pub gardens or dining outdoors lest those on adjacent tables set a bad example.

Never heard of a blindfold?

Her solution is for outdoor smoking and non-smoking areas.

Who can say fairer than that, eh? Just a small concession. Even though one could argue we have had legally defined smoking and non-smoking areas for six years now, otherwise known as outdoors and in-fucking-doors!

I was so emotionally moved by this heart-rending account that I took to Twitter to express sympathy.

Never stop fucking whining, do they? http://t.co/cTiEH4aiyD
— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) August 8, 2013

Or, as the Daily Mash put it today.

Non-smokers told to shut up and stop being so utterly pathetic

Well, quite.

Some Nasty Animals Shouldn't Be Kept As Pets

As I was laughing throughout this BBC article, I couldn't help but be reminded of stories where big cats have assaulted those who loved and cared for them.

Alcohol Concern's survey suggested that 31% of Labour MPs, 20% of Conservatives and 19% of Liberal Democrats thought their colleagues drank too much and the charity called for a change in drinking habits among politicians at Westminster. 

Chief executive Eric Appleby said: "If a quarter of employees reported an unhealthy drinking culture in any other organisation it would provoke immediate action by bosses."

That's the Alcohol Concern, created by government in the mid-1980s, which has been reared and nurtured by the love and financial sustenance of politicians as a pet to snarl, bully, and intimidate a previously content public.

Now it has slipped its leash and is savaging its carer. Oh joy! How d'ya like them apples, boys and girls?

What sweet irony, too, that MPs are currently considering new laws against people who keep vicious dogs as pets. They should be well aware, then, that irresponsible owners who don't properly discipline animals with ferocious vandalism in their genes are liable to turn nasty without warning.

You reap what you sow, as they say, so suck it up Nanny Statists.

Stop Accepting Tax Cash, Stirling, And Your Problem Is Solved

Patsy has highlighted an article by Donna Edmunds at The Commentator which is well worth a read.

It concerns Stirling University's illegal refusal to abide by the Information Commissioner's decision - which I quote here - that they should release data to Philip Morris International.

So desperate are Stirling that, as Edmunds has discovered, they have set up a Facebook group specifically to create the illusion of some upsurge of popular revulsion at the very idea. Sadly, of the first five entries, four are paid to comment since they work in public health, and only one is not from Australia. From that unpromising start, it just goes downhill once the call to action alert drags in vested public sector interests from across the net to spout how outrageous it is that a University should be made to observe the law.

Some of the comments are hilarious:

Elaine Rodger - I was surprised and appalled in equal measure to know that it was even possible to try to use the FOI legislation in this way.

Surprised and appalled that Freedom of Information legislation should make information - paid for by taxes that we, and companies, are forced to hand over - available to those who fund it, so she is. A law doing exactly what it says on the tin? How ridiculous!

Carole Furlong - They shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the data. if they want to do thier (sic) own research on the best way to get young people addicted to a lethal product, they should fund it themselves.

Great idea Carole, love, except that your piercing logic has been somewhat destroyed by ... Stirling University.

[Professor Gerard Hastings, of the uni's Institute for Social Marketing] said: "If Philip Morris ran focus groups asking 14-year-olds what they thought about smoking, there'd be uproar.

Hmm, we'll take that as a non-starter then.

Vicki Snelgrove - [...] if there was an agreement not to share data beyond the study then surely the uni is bound over to their participants...

This is the most wibblingly arrogant of the lot. A University, according to Vicki, is bound more by the people it chooses to canvass than it is by the law of the land. Despite the fact that - in accepting funding - the University would have been well aware of their obligations to satisfy the terms of the FOIA 2000. In fact, it would have been stated categorically in the document they signed before being given the cash. It's a standard clause when dealing with any public sector organisation.

If they want to offer promises to their subjects, perhaps they should have refused the funding in the first place. They quite simply - under the law - can't have both.

Just a quick aside, but doesn't this hint at the increasing sense of independence from accountability that all public health bodies now seem to operate by?

ASH (at least, this time, the English version) slung their oar in too.

Martin Dockrell - Our Government is supposed to be protecting health policy from the tobacco industry lobby machine. Handing over this information is putting our universtities (Freudian sic?) at the service of Britain's biggest killer.

No, Martin. It puts our Universities at the service of those who pay for them. Remember us taxpayers? You know, the poor saps who pay your mortgage - and, indeed, that comment you just wrote on our time - you hideous tax-sponging creep?

Sam Warren - assurances were made to the participants in this study on how their data would be used and this data should NOT be shared.

As above. Such assurances were arrogant, misguided, and illegal.

Claire Valentin - They should read the published research like everybody else. This FOI request clearly has wider implications for anyone doing research, in a number of respects.

Yes it does, Claire. It means that if you want to keep research hidden, pay for it your bloody self.

Becky Freeman - Absolutely not. Sharing confidential research data with an industry that will surely exploit it for its own financial gain cannot be permitted. How could the public ever trust public health researchers again?

You're making a wild assumption that any of us trust you as far as we could throw you, Becky. Of course, I can't throw you very far because you live in Australia, so what the fuck has it to do with you?

Robert West - It takes courage and determination to stand up to this kind of bullying.

Join the club, Robert West of CRUK. It is government legislation which is the 'bully' here. You don't seem too concerned when you use such a thing to your own advantage, do you?

But the best of the lot comes from Australia's undisputed Champion of anti-smoker hatred..

Simon Chapman - The day Stirling should share its data, is the day that the tobacco industry shares its data on how much it now earns from underage smoking and its forward projections on what today's and future generations of child smokers will mean to its bottom line.

I had so much to say about why Philip Morris have no obligation to reveal data in the same way as Stirling University definitely do. Fortunately, Tim Worstall has already articulated it wonderfully on the tangential subject of think tank funding.

I’m entirely happy with entirely voluntary disclosure on such matters: what individuals do with their money is up to them, just as what brand or style of bread you buy is private to you. What the money which has been raised from us at gunpoint gets spent on is rightly a matter of public record.

That Friends of the Earth Europe gets more than 50% of its funding from the EU, funding supplied so that it can lobby the EU, is important information. That Alcohol Concern gains some 90% (these numbers are from memory, do check them at Fake Charities if you wish) of its money from government, that the salt puritans, the smoking bansturbators, are similarly funded is equally important.

And I’ll even make a deal. When Deborah Arnott’s screen and radio appearances, public utterances, are accompanied by a “this wanker is paid for out of your taxes” warning then I’ll make sure that my income, and thus my funding, is similarly disclosed. Until then you’re all cordially invited to fornicate and travel.

And this is the problem Stirling face. Once they accepted tax-funded cash, they were legally obliged to abide by The Freedom of Information Act and, consequentially, the Information Commissioner's decisions. They knew this when they took the money, they will have signed a document to register acceptance of that fact. Stirling registered their objections to the ICO and they were roundly rejected. End of. Game over.

Philip Morris, however, accept only money freely given to them by consumers, so are under no such obligation ... however much Chapman would like to fantasise about it. The difference could not be more stark.

Here's my advice to Stirling University, in Chapman's parlance for easy comprehension.

The day Stirling should be able to hide its data, is the day that they refuse all funding from the taxpayer for all of their activities. That means no more research grants; no more government subsidies; no more tax-funded salaries; nothing. Then, and only then, can they withhold information which is covered by the law.

To quote Martin Dockrell's ASH after the jailing of Nick Hogan.

A spokesman for anti-smoking lobby group ASH said: “The smoking legislation is very clear."

As is Freedom of Information legislation. Rules is rules. Go private and leave our taxes alone, or cough up the info and stop bleating.

Your choice.

Do Unto Others ...

Oh joy!

Reports from Westminster that some MPs were so strapped for cash under the new expenses regime that they were dossing down in their offices were, I assumed, apocryphal. Not a bit of it. The Clerk of the House, Michael Jack, has been forced to issue an edict warning that sleeping on the premises is strictly verboten.

And the best bit? To stop the poor, innocent, destitute, borassic souls from dossing in their offices, Jack is invoking the nation's catch-all precautionary leviathan for anything that isn't strictly illegal but which someone, somewhere, doesn't particularly approve of. Yep ... health and safety.

the Clerk if the House has seized on health and safety, pointing out that the Palace of Westminster has no overnight fire marshal cover [...]. He adds: “So, in the event of a fire in the quiet hours, we could not ensure building evacuation, nor could we tell search and rescue teams from the emergency services of anyone trapped in a building

Such a small story, so much schadenfreude.

1) £65k salary, extra living allowance if you're a London MP, a second home if you're not, subsidised food and drink, but you need to sleep in your office? You've got to be shitting me?
2) How are those overweening health and safety regs - which you fuckers inflicted on us - working for ya', boys and girls?

and, of course ...

3) Remember that you're not being banned from a legal activity ... you are merely required to step outside the building to do so. Not much to ask, is it?

The other foot bloody enjoys wearing the boot occasionally.

Why The US Should Tell Jamie Oliver To Fuck Right Off

Hey, you crazy yanks, consider yourselves warned. If you choose to ignore advice, you're on your own.

Please read the whole Spiked article and marvel at how the tedious mockney cretin manages to fill a speech of 18 minutes with a comprehensive walk-through of the junk stats, contradictory scares, and ill-founded tear-tugging currently spouted by self-satisfied food gauleiters.

So, having watched Jamie feed you some fattened statistics about obesity that have been shown to be wildly inaccurate, seen him declare falsely that your kids are going to die far younger than they should, and watched him make a decent, upstanding, loving mother cry on TV, what did you do, America? You gave him a prize. What were you thinking?

Okay, it is partly our fault. When he tried this stuff over here, our prime minister at the time, Tony Blair, was so desperate to fawn over anybody who was having any influence on the public that he met him and announced new government policies in response to his TV series. The result? Fewer kids eat school meals than before he started while school meals staff have to work harder.

Still, what does the self-declared opponent of the food police care as long as he can break into America's lucrative recipe book market?

Not sure about kids consuming too much junk food as it is certainly not apparent in Puddlecoteville, but Jamie has been dangerously binge-feasting on righteous schlong, it would appear.

Time for him to cut down on slurping at the Fatfinder General's man batter and stop being such a hideously interfering chimp, methinks.

Suck It Up

Peter Preston, gullible Labour mouthpiece of the day.

It may be unfashionable to say so, but targets have repeatedly been shown in fact to work

Anyone who has experienced booking a GP appointment before, and after, waiting targets were introduced, will attest to the ingenuity of the public sector (and humans, in general, to be fair) in cheating the gamers. Still, let's bear him out.

And yet, here is a five-year inquiry by the Economic and Social Research Council which shows that, yes, targets do work. And here's a walloping survey from the Nuffield Trust looking at NHS performance in England, where targets still rule the roost, and devolved Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where they don't. And yet again, targets work.

That's the ESCR which, according to its 'About Us' page is ...

... an independent organisation, established by Royal Charter, but receive most of our funding through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills

And the Nuffield Trust, whose accounts detail alliances with Labour GOAT, Lord 'I'll say anything for my party' Darzi, and research contracts from the Department of Health.

Yep, forget the experiences of we poor saps who use the NHS, and the demoralised front-liners who continually speak of Labour's bureaucratic obstacles to actually getting the job done.

And forget the human trait of playing the box-ticking game for the express purpose of passing the box-ticking test. The government-funded box checkers have spoken, and their word is indisputable.

It's modern politics. Pay for a flood of government-friendly info and gullible sponges will suck it up without question.