Clueless Councils - One Year On

Last year, the Freedom Association's Freedom to Vape (FtV) campaign submitted FOI requests to every local council in the UK to ask about their policies on vaping in the workplace. If you have a good memory, you will recall that the responses highlighted that the overwhelming majority of local authorities were imposing rules on their staff from a position of superlative ignorance. I wrote about it here.

But still, back then the subject was quite fresh for them so despite positive reports on vaping having been issued from Public Health England (August 2015), the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (February 2016), and the Royal College of Physicians (April 2016), they could be partly forgiven for being lethargic in applying sane and sympathetic policies for their workers.

Public Health England had only just published their guidance that "e-cigarette use is not covered by smokefree legislation and should not be routinely included in the requirements of an organisation's smokefree policy" in July 2016, so the fact that 87% of those who responded admitted doing exactly that was concerning, but would surely change once the rusty cogs of public sector bureaucracy managed to grind their turgid way towards more knowledgeable policy-making, wouldn't it?

Especially since this year's government Tobacco Control Plan specifically stated that it sought to "support consumers in stopping smoking and adopting the use of less harmful nicotine products". And seeing as public health duties have been devolved to local government now, it should also be their duty to take the government's advice and apply it, don't you think?

So with this in mind, FtV followed up last year's efforts by again sending FOIs to all UK councils to see if there had been a change in outlook over the past 12 months. Surely - with all that positive information out there from prime authorities on tobacco control - the average public sector vaping worker's lot would be a happier one, right?

Wrong.

This year's report is now available to read here, and this is truly incredible.

126​ ​councils​ ​(32​ ​per​ ​cent​ ​of​ ​those​ ​who​ ​responded)​ ​require​ ​vapers​ ​to​ ​use designated​ ​smoking​ ​areas​ in all or some circumstances, despite the fact that vapers are not smokers. This​ ​is​ ​an​ ​increase​ ​from​ ​112 councils​ ​in​ ​2016.

Considering PHE's guidance in 2016 said that "it is never acceptable to require vapers to share the same outdoor space with smokers", you have to marvel at the spectacular ignorance and/or rampant snobbery which has led to an increase in councils demanding exactly that. They have, in general, done the exact opposite of what PHE have advised.

The future doesn't look bright either, as the report highlights:

When asked​ ​if​ ​councillors​ ​are​ ​due​ ​to​ ​debate​ ​the​ ​Government’s​ ​Tobacco​ ​Control Plan​ ​and/or PHE’s advice on vaping policies, a​ ​total​ ​of​ ​287​ ​councils​ ​replied​ ​no​. 

When asked if the council's​ ​policy​ ​will​ ​be​ ​reviewed​ ​as​ ​a​ ​result​ ​of​ ​the​ ​Government's Tobacco​ ​Control​ ​Plan​, 150​ ​councils​ ​either​ ​said​ ​yes,​ ​was​ ​scheduled​ ​for​ ​review​ ​later this​ ​year​ ​or​ ​in​ ​2018,​ ​or​ ​that​ ​the  ​policy​ ​was​ ​under​ ​review​ -​ a measly 38%​ ​of​ ​those councils​ ​who​ ​replied.

So basically, almost two-thirds of councils are gonna do diddley-squat about what are largely appalling and thoughtless policies. 

Here are just a few of the more egregious policy snippets from this year's crop of stunning, bone-headed stupidity. 

Despite the wealth of guidance from PHE, the RCP, NCSCT and the TCP, where do you think Glasgow Council went for their advice? Yes, America, obviously!

“Impartial studies such as Harvard reports and US Food and Drug Administration research state that the vapour has been found to contain detectable levels of several known carcinogens and toxic chemicals to which users could potentially be exposed. The reports also suggest that by simulating the use of cigarettes, E-Cigarettes might reactivate the habit in ex-smokers.”

Perhaps we can just save our taxes and stop paying all those UK-based health bodies then, let's just devolve our evidence-gathering to a bunch of conflict-riddled alarmists from across the pond. Glasgow's policy was updated in August this year yet - incredibly - they see absolutely nothing wrong with it!

Cumbria's policy is also out of the ark.

“use of e-cigarettes or ENDS in the workplace is currently unregulated. Extensive trials have not been undertaken to establish if they are safe and tests by Trading Standards have shown that some e-cigarettes are in contravention of product safety regulations. Using e-cigarettes simulates smoking behaviour. Allowing use of e-cigarettes can be viewed as condoning smoking. Cumbria County Council, in line with British Medical Association Occupational Medicine Committee and the Board of Science guidance, does not support the use of e-cigarettes in the workplace. It actively supports employees to stop smoking for their health and also supports actions to denormalise smoking. Consequently Cumbria County Council applies the same restrictions to the use of e-cigarettes that apply to smoking tobacco products.”

Just count the errrors in that paragraph. Isn't it astonishing? The policy dates from 2012, that's why. But they have discussed updating it, as their response details:

Vaping has been discussed at the Cumbria Public Health Alliance and at Cumbria Health and Wellbeing Board both of which contain Cumbria County Council elected members. These bodies both endorsed the advice detailed above. There are no planned further discussions or decision expected from elected members.

PHE? Pah! Cumbrian burghers had a chat this year and that's the end of the matter.

The desperate excuses they use to cling to prohibitionist policy are quite revealing too. Many replied that PHE's advice is just that, advice, so they have ignored it. Others, such as East Devon say they are dedicated to denormalising smoking ... so therefore e-cigs are banned. Burnley says vaping is banned because their policy applies to "anything that is smoked", while the comedy of the piece is provided by South Norfolk.

Employees taking their unpaid lunch break off-site may smoke/vape discreetly to limit them being identified as Council workers. This could be achieved by covering identifiable logos or for depot staff by stepping behind a stationary refuse vehicle so they are not visible from the road etc.

And by Fareham, whose comprehensive ban on e-cigs was updated in August and whose response of 11th October stated:

We follow national campaigns when publicised. We do not encourage e-cigarettes as a means of smoking cessation.

Yes, written slap bang in the middle of the national Stoptober campaign featuring adverts on TV which ... encouraged e-cigs as a means of smoking cessation.

I've been helping FtV recently by doing data-checking on the FOIs and - believe me - a staggering number of them are mind-rotting stuff. Anyone with a good understanding of the vaping debate who reads some of the utter garbage I have would, at some point, consider self-harm.

Cumbria wasn't the only council to still think that e-cigs are unregulated, for example. Brighton and Hove was just one of many others. It's almost like the TPD never happened. In fact, on the subject of the TPD, those who have completely ignored it are only matched by those who have used it as a reason to ban vaping.

A perfect bellwether, I think, is Elmbridge Borough Council which accepts that vaping is not covered by the Health Act 2006, but states that:

However, once the EU Tobacco Products Directive comes into effect in Member States in May 2016, electronic cigarettes and refill containers will come under the requirements of the Directive.

So if e-cigs are unregulated, they're banned. But if they are regulated, that's just another reason for them to be, erm, banned. It's almost like it's not about health and you're damn well not allowed to win if local councils can possibly help it. It's the kind of hysterical mindset that makes you understand how medieval witch-hunts occurred, just a bunch of hive-minded ignoramuses who seem to have no care for evidence or knowledge, just a cult-like bovine sense that banning things and sucking satisfaction out of life must be good ... even when aimed at their own colleagues.

It smacks of an environment where banning things is almost compulsory. It only takes a whisper from PHE or the government about salt, sugar, fast food, tobacco or anything else you can think of, and councils are falling over themselves. They rush to create initiatives, throw money like confetti at "raising awareness" days, publish slick promotional material for their latest anti-fun crusade, actually work weekends to promote it too, and use funereal language to demand you heed dire warnings about the tiniest of risk.

But should the government, PHE and a whole host of other organisations produce reams of research and reports saying that e-cigs should be encouraged, not banned, the same eager council employees cock a deaf 'un.

It's what we should expect from regulators, I suppose. The ratchet, as they say, only goes one way. They know - because it turns them on - how to regulate, while "de-regulate" is not even in their vocabulary. It tells me, though, that we obviously require far more cuts to council budgets. If they are so eager to create policies for problems which don't exist, while ideologically resisting guidance which is good for their employees' health, there are obviously far too many of them and they are working inefficiently.

Remember that these very same councils getting something so simple as vaping policy so very very wrong - even when presented with a wealth of good advice from those in their own profession - are the same ones entrusted with making local roads safe, planning how your town develops, and educating your kids. Just let that sink in for a bit.

Do go read the full report here - along with notes on all the FOIs submitted - and see how ignorant your particular council is. Believe me, there are vanishingly few decent ones. 

Enfield, A Beacon In A Morass Of Local Insanity

Councillor Simon Cooke last month wrote a couple of articles on the frustration he felt when trying to introduce an enlightened approach to vaping at Bradford City Council. The second of these, in particular, listed the daft and contrived justifications that his fellow council members put forward in order to dismiss the idea, do go read them here and his commentary on the matter.

Where we go from here I'm not sure. Putting another motion to Council won't work and I'd already tried approaching public health and the council's HR department directly (they chose not to reply). We've made - and will continue to make - the case through the press. Maybe Bradford's vapers are happy to muddle through with a mish-mash of different attitudes towards what they do. And perhaps public health (and Labour councillors) are happy to conflate smoking and vaping because it suits their disdain for what seems like a decidedly working-class habit.

He shouldn't feel too disheartened because it's quite clear from a report published today by Freedom to Vape - after submitting FOI requests to every council in the country on their workplace vaping policies - that crass ignorance, snobbery and prejudice about e-cigs is not something confined to Bradford in isolation. It is nationwide.

The report lists some of the most egregious policy excuses but the most prevalent is this utterly lazy one.

By simply executing a blanket ban, the majority of councils have buried their heads in the sand, hoping that a perceived problem will disappear.

In a huge number of cases, this is absolutely correct.

Now, it's important to note here that 'public health' decisions have been devolved to council level. So even this kind of idle policy-making is reprehensible considering we now have positive reports on vaping from Public Health England (August 2015), the National Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training (February 2016), the Royal College of Physicians (April 2016), and - specifically on vaping in workplaces - from Public Health England again in July 2016.

However, faced with the advent of e-cigs, hundreds of councils obviously couldn't bother to research what they were - the "we should be talking about more important things for the District than vaping" approach described by Cooke - and even their 'public health' departments seemed blissfully unaware of guidance from national authorities or, even worse, have ignored it entirely in favour of earlier messages which enable them to justify kneejerk bans despite their parochial policies being reviewed after better advice had been issued.

The overall ignorance is quite jaw-dropping. The Freedom to Vape summary is damning enough, but do read the spreadsheet file which accompanies it to get the full extent of how very ill-informed (or lazy) the people running 'public health' at local level really are.

Accompanying the report is a file detailing quotes from the FOI responses (see here). I dare you to read them as many are shameful and very often quite shocking. Just about all of the lame excuses Cooke encountered in Bradford are represented and communicated proudly by responding councils, and are complemented by much more rot that his colleagues never thought of.

For example, a disturbing number justify their ban simply for the fact that they say e-cigs "look like smoking", an irrelevant point which shows that their 'public health' departments have either not been consulted or are woefully incompetent. Northumberland County Council even use this to explain why they ban vaping within 30 metres of council buildings!

Reading Council bans e-cigs on the basis that their policy prohibits "anything that can be smoked"; Redditch Council describes e-cigs as "smoking materials"; West Dorset declares that "vaping is held in the same category as smoking"; Wrexham class vaping "in the same manner as smoking of other materials in all cases"; Ipswich confidently "considers use of e-cigarettes to be a form of smoking"; and Flintshire Council bizarrely says that it is "committed to reducing visibility of smoking and this includes e-cigarettes". Forest of Dean says much the same, stating that they encourage staff not to smoke so therefore "do not permit use of e-cigarettes". Worst of the bunch in this category, though, is Isle of Wight for their grammatically-ugly "staff are however aware that smoking via an e-cigarette is treated in the same way as what smoking is".

Considering these councils are probably involved in education, perhaps someone should point them to a dictionary and/or explain what a non-sequitor is.

Despite the reports by PHE, RCP, NCSCT, ASH, CRUK and all other positive sources, many councils state that their policy is currently being reviewed but that they have already decided that a ban will stay in place. Glasgow Council has a rule that e-cigs cannot be charged and asserts that e-cigarettes are unregulated! Erm, TPD anyone?

Buckinghamshire say that they considered the issue but decided it was easier to just ban them, but that they will re-consider if e-cigs are classed as medicinal devices by the government; Horsham admits that there is no reason to ban because they fall "outside of the scope" of the smoking ban ... but ban them anyway; while Pembrokeshire concede that vaping is not illegal but it "mimics smoking" so that's good enough for them.

Both Lancashire and Shropshire (and a few others) cite the WHO saying e-cigs should be banned as their justification, while St Helens Council, along with Stockport, soberly announce that they are in favour of denormalising smoking and - without even a hint at providing supporting evidence - that e-cigs undermine this.

Stirling Council's policy - reviewed in February 2016 - authoritatively states that "there is insufficient evidence to prove they are safe for bystanders", a statement of such absolute idiocy that if I lived there I'd be demanding my council tax money back.

Some are very imaginative. Oldham say that e-cigs can be "unsettling" to people who are trying to quit so off to the smoking shelter you must go, while Powys insist that vaping "reinforces the normalcy of cigarette use" and that e-cigs are "the equivalent of cigarettes". Where they get such crap from is anyone's guess.

Trafford and South Cambridgeshire not only make staff leave the council's grounds to vape but also refuse to allow vaping breaks which is a recommendation of PHE in July this year. However, they are eclipsed by Medway Council who reach a special level of fuckwittery by declaring that "since electronic cigarettes often resemble ‘standard’ cigarettes very closely, staff should not be seen using electronic cigarettes whilst in uniform, either in paid or unpaid time". Yes, unpaid time too, just imagine being that much of an ignorant local 'public health' idiot that you came up with a policy like that for products which the RCP said should be "promoted widely".

As for Fenland District Council, can anyone - anywhere - point to where they get this bollocks from? Because they claim their policy "aims to prevent exposure to the vapours [e-cigs] produce in the same way that exposure to tobacco smoke is prevented, which is in line with the guidance issued by Public Health England". Sorry, but I think I must have missed that from PHE.

The Freedom to Vape report rightly highlights a quote from PHE which states categorically that "it is never acceptable to require vapers to share the same outdoor space with smokers". Now, it is irrelevant whether you or I agree with that or not, but it's damning that over 100 councils have completely ignored it and demand that vapers are only allowed to use e-cigs in designated smoking areas. If the future of 'public health' being devolved is that they all completely ignore guidance they are given by those superior to them, what's the point of paying any of them out of our taxes?

There is one beacon of light in amongst a morass of local authority insanity though, so step forward the London Borough of Enfield.

LB Enfield does not have a policy on the use of e-cigarettes.  We accept the evidence that e-cigarettes can aid smokers to stop using tobacco and encourage this. LB Enfield does not have a policy on the use of e-cigarettes and there are no plans to introduce one.

They should be praised from the rooftops for such a tolerant and enlightened attitude and I do hope - if they are serious about guidance that is obviously being ignored by local authority knuckle-draggers throughout the land - that PHE and others who claim to be 'vape-friendly' will let Enfield know that their policy is superb and publicly congratulate them as an encouragement for other authorities to follow their lead.

It's not just Simon Cooke's council which needs educating, it would seem, but also many others who require something more substantial than what is obviously already being ignored by inadequate local authority muppets. To Simon, I'd say that yes, he should resubmit his motion to Bradford Council. I hope this report wakes a few councils up and that Cooke writes to PHE and asks for some tangible help; from a budget of £500m per annum, I'm pretty sure PHE could send a stiff letter to all the ignorant and incompetent councils in Freedom to Vape's report and order them to stop being so damn stupid.

Cue tumbleweed.

You can read the full report along with copious notes from the FOI responses by clicking here. 

A 44 Year Monopoly

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

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

You can view the award letter below.

ASH Grant Award Letter 2016-17

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Those Inconvenient Commoners

Tom Slater has written a superb essay in Spiked Review which I can heartily recommend you read in its entirety. Here are a few salient highlights.

Victorian elitism is back. Let’s fight it. 

The bald, seething contempt with which journalists, academics and politicians met the British people’s decision to leave the European Union has been remarkable. Though often dressed up in defences of representative, parliamentary democracy, against the alleged instability of direct democracy and plebiscites, the message has been clear: the masses are too stupid, too emotional, too morally ill-equipped to play a serious role in political life. 

The necessity of having a cool-headed elite to temper the will of the masses, and insulate politics from the people, has been argued for plainly, even by those who would consider themselves radical and progressive. In an interview with Open Democracy, philosopher Slavoj Zizek slammed the referendum, arguing instead for the ‘appearance of a free decision, discretely guided’ by the elite – an ‘invisible state, whose mechanisms work in the background’. Elitism, technocracy, soft tyranny, even, are being presented as necessary correctives to the ignorance of the masses: ‘Perhaps’, opined a US academic, ‘the UK’s leaders owe it to the people to thwart their expressed will’. 

The shamelessness with which arguments against democracy, against the people, have been put forward feels genuinely astonishing and new in an era in which those who rule feel, at the very least, obliged to tiptoe around us, rather than greet our arguments and passions head-on. But history shows us there is nothing surprising to the elite’s response to the Brexit vote.

No, there isn't. And there is nowhere that it is more transparently seen than in the issues we talk about on these pages.

'Public health' tax-scroungers are past masters at ignoring the will of the people. How else does one describe a vast array of NGOs and fake charities which derive no funding whatsoever from the public but who employ thousands of highly-paid lobbyists to do nothing but scaremonger, produce junk science and petition parliaments for anti-social policies on popular products?

There was no call from the public for a sugar tax until a few state-funded nutters demanded it; no-one ever asked for minimum pricing to make their weekly grocery bill more expensive; no-one asked for plain packaging (because everyone except 'public health' troughers know it's laughable); and people quite like fast food and don't want outlets shut down; yet vast amounts of our taxes are hurled at repulsive prodnoses to shriek about how 'urgent' these things are.

ASH itself was only founded by government cash in 1972 because the government couldn't understand why the public weren't anti-smoking like politicians were, and Alcohol Concern was likewise set up by elitist politicians in the 1980s.

Similarly, the Godawful pact between elitist politicos and the rancid gravy train passengers they fling huge salaries at has become accustomed to using or ignoring public opinion however it sees fit, as I've written about before.

Yesterday Simon Clark reported that Swansea Council held a Consultation on Smoke-Free Public Spaces ... and promptly ignored it.

In other words, even though less than 15% of respondents were current smokers there was still a clear majority opposed or strongly opposed to extending smoking bans to public beaches. 

Ignoring that small detail, Swansea Council has gone ahead and introduced a 'voluntary' smoking ban at Caswell Bay with the support (naturally) of ASH Wales and other interfering busybodies. 

The Caswell Bay policy is described as a one-year pilot scheme. I imagine it's what they intended all along. The outcome of the consultation was a minor hiccup.

Indeed, because anti-smoking is a pseudo-religious crusade. It is nothing to do with health and the tobacco control industry has never been remotely interested in the public good. Despite undoubtedly knowing the results of the Swansea Council consultation ASH Wales, for example, couldn't give a badger's tit what the public think.

“We support Swansea Council in implementing their first smokefree beach – only the second of its kind in Wales. 

But then the first, you may remember, was "fully" welcomed by 'vape-friendly' ASH Wales despite (or maybe because) it included vaping. Their logo now sits proudly on signs designed to 'denormalise' e-cigs in the minds of the public. It's pretty clear that the only people ASH Wales really care about are those who derive state-funded salaries from ASH Wales.

Well, actually it's not strictly true that tax-sponging anti-smoking sock puppets always ignore the public. If it suits them they are more than happy to use us as lobbying tools, as we saw in September last year.

Sheila Duffy, from anti-smoking group Ash Scotland, said in a 2014 survey, 73% of Scottish adults agreed smoking around hospitals should be outlawed.

So, if the public want smoking banned, ASH will call for a ban; if the public doesn't want smoking banned, erm, ASH will still call for a ban.

This is, of course, not even close to being the first time all branches of ASH have completely ignored the wishes of the people whose taxes pay their salaries, the same was true with plain packaging and all UK smoking bans to name but two occasions of many.

In short, here is the tobacco control industry's policy towards the public, in full.

"If the public is useful for what we want, great; but if not, fuck 'em"

This is just one example. There are many others I could mention which all share the same characteristic ... according to the 'public health' cult, we must never, on any account, be listened to unless our opinion agrees with what they - a circle jerk of vapid politicians and tax spongers who encourage them - have decided for us.

What's more, they are often even prepared to ride roughshod over their own kind if a policy they want to bully us with doesn't agree with the evidence. Here is an incredible example from Sheffield this past week. A smoking ban outdoors has been applied despite there being no evidence of harm whatsoever, it includes e-cigs. Just a couple of weeks ago Public Health England stated quite clearly that this should not happen, but who gives a shit if you're a Director of Public Health?

Screw those city slickers,eh @felly500, what do they know? #JoinedUpPublicHealth pic.twitter.com/A4tQMChnDt

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) July 30, 2016

Well whaddya know! After years of telling us otherwise, anecdotes *do* equal anecdata after all! @felly500 #Crooks pic.twitter.com/kuqbnfSA5W

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) July 30, 2016

Y'see - after ignoring the public; blocking dissent on social media; excluding all opposing views from being heard; and excluding independent voices from debates - even if elements of 'public health' itself agrees that prohibitionist policies are wrong, the moral panickers and bigotry-stokers will still navigate around it.

Tom Slater is correct, these hideous elitists must be fought all the way. Do go read his whole piece to see how top-down elitist snobbery is not even a new phenomenon, it's just that state-funded lobbyists have learned to harness it to selfishly stuff their trousers with your hard-earned in recent decades, and bugger the consequences.

Politicians, Look In The Mirror

As the hysterical finger-pointing drags on and on after the EU referendum vote, there was a tiny glimmer from Nicky Morgan on the Peston show yesterday morning. Here's what she said.

"I just think actually that it's time that we treated the British people more like grown ups"

And the truth will set you free!

Yes, someone up there in the Westminster bubble finally seems to be getting it.

In amongst the cries of how "stupid" the public were for making the 'wrong' choice; or the accusations that anyone who voted to leave was quite obviously racist; or that such decisions shouldn't be entrusted to the little people, instead it should be career-minded politicians only to decide such things, here - at last - was someone actually understanding the problem.

She'll sink without trace, I'm sure, because it's almost heresy to harbour such thoughts amongst the grinding atmosphere of self-enrichment and ladder-climbing enjoyed by her peers, but she's correct.

Just read that comment again. Isn't it quite astounding that she should even have to say it? Jaw-dropping that the attitude of politicians has sunk to such a level that they do actually treat us all like children.

We know this attitude very well on these pages. The tobacco display ban, for example, is such a ludicrous policy that it is openly laughed at by everyone you speak to at any supermarket tobacco kiosk. The public know very well that plain packaging is a waste of everyone's time, and the public also knew that the ban on smoking in cars was unenforceable as the police have now confirmed by saying it “hasn’t been thought through”. Well of course not, because it wasn't imagined to further the interests of the public, it was brought in to swell the pockets of bureaucrats and parasitic grant-seeking lobby groups.

Politicians haven't listened to the public for a very long time. 'Public' consultations ceased to be about consulting the public yonks ago, and political policy has shifted instead into ordering the public around at the behest of taxpayer-funded prohibitionists, self-installed moral guardians and repulsive snobs. They want you to pay more for your booze because you're not grown up enough to make a choice for yourself; they want to stop you smoking because, well, they just don't like it; and they sure as shit don't want you eating or drinking anything with sugar in it so they're going to slap a tax on things you freely choose to buy, mostly because you like them and the companies which sell them.

These are just examples in the policy areas we discuss here, but it's the same condescending and smug attitude in every department of government ... the people are too stupid to make their own decisions, therefore those decisions must be denied them. By overwhelming force if necessary and always with a threat of impoverishment and/or incarceration. The politician and his trusty tax-leeching bureaucracy must be satisfied, the public can go fuck itself.

Of course, if you complain about any of this you're instantly described as selfish and irrelevant. Who amongst vapers who read this place has been dismissed for their hatred of the EU because "vaping is a tiny issue, not worth throwing our whole EU membership away for"? I'd guess very many. Because, you see, it's only the sages, those with wisdom, that can see the bigger picture. Yet you can bet that every other irked group with a valid claim to have been marginalised and ignored by the EU and its strangling paper-pushing self-perpetuation will have heard the same daft argument.

When every grass roots group is hearing that their cause is irrelevant, it suggests that the bigger problem is the overarching arrogance of the state. It's not the small matters and those who advocate for them who are at fault, it is the "bigger picture" that has been painted by a blind political class!

When every area of policy strives to silence public dissent is it any wonder that the public strikes back? If the political elite didn't want that to happen, perhaps they should not have taken the piss out of us for so long. If the political establishment want to apportion blame for the Brexit vote, perhaps they should take a long hard look in the mirror.

Because democracy, believe it or not, should actually be about the people as Ronald Reagan explained when he was on his way out and had no reason to spin.

'We the People.' 'We the People' tell the government what to do; it doesn't tell us. 'We the People' are the driver; the government is the car. And we decide where it should go, and by what route, and how fast. 

When did our country, a proud early adopter of democracy, forget that?

So well done Nicky Morgan for beginning to work out that the public don't appreciate being treated like kids and that - despite all the fear-mongering and emotional rhetoric spouted recently - we are actually quite happy to have voted out one level of wasteful, self-serving, bureaucratic, public-hating, aloof, uncontrollable and unaccountable drains on society and free choice.

The next step might be to actually do something about it, so when is that going to begin. Exactly?

End Of An Error

The Guardian has reported on the departure of the Faculty of Public Health's nagger-in-Chief John Ashton. Staying true to the ethos of 'public health' - and comparing the country's kids to "livestock" - he has marked the occasion by being a pompous sneering prick.

The government should give parents lessons on how to raise their children, according to Britain’s leading public health expert.

I'd say he's going out with a bang but regulars here will remember one of his even more arrogant and condescending moments one Saturday back in 2014.

So as he makes way for someone equally appalling, let's reprise John Ashton's biggest hit.

Last week, the BBC rolled out their latest e-cig 'expert' to regurgitate the fantasies of Big Pharma and the irrational prejudices of rent-seekers - you can listen to his bizarre claims here and here. Said expert - the head of the Faculty of Public Health, no less - was naturally challenged with facts and proper evidence to counter his stark scaremongery such as that e-cigs cause blindness, amongst others. 

He wasn't impressed on Wednesday.

This "abuse" was something of a surprise to vapers on Twitter seeing as the tweets were merely ones questioning his evidence and offering opposing views. It was even more bizarre considering he had pre-blocked a slew of prominent vaping tweeters so couldn't have seen what they said anyway. 

Some discussion ensued but it had moved on by the following day and Ashton was largely forgotten. However, last night, sober thoughtful public health industry spokesman Prof John Ashton unfathomably decided to trawl some of the accounts he had blocked and offer contemptuous replies. It must have taken him a while since he went back six months to find this one!

And nearly three weeks to find this innocent tweet to attack.

But that was just a small indicator of the astonishing meltdown to come. About the time it takes to down a bottle of Merlot later, the unhinged insults began ...

... and continued for a further hour.

In a riveting Saturday night tour de force, Ashton toggled between the astounding ...

... and the truly surreal.

One of his own side tried to get him to tone it down, but to no avail.

You can read the whole article here. How he wasn't sacked for that episode is anyone's guess, but it seems 'public health' have lower morals and standards than the rest of society.

So farewell then John Ashton, waning star in the smug condescending people-hating 'public health' firmament, you will be sorely pissed missed.

Draw A Line Here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Lords Realise It's Not About Health

It seems that, yet again, e-cigs are having the effect of proving that the tobacco control industry has little regard for health.

This time though, it is the House of Lords whose eyes are being divested of their scales. On Tuesday, a Lords committee saw Lord after Lord stand up and tell the government that the EU's Tobacco Products Directive was variously - and I quote - "nonsense", "absolutely absurd", "madness" and "bonkers".

You can read the whole thing in Hansard here if you haven't already, and I urge you to do so, because this was a government representative - in this case Lord Prior of Brampton - getting a right good kicking for the stupidity of people like Anna Soubry in not speaking up against the TPD when they had the chance.

The quotes of astonishment came thick and fast during a discussion which barely lasted an hour. Here are just a few of them.

Viscount Ridley: 

It is the product of big-company lobbying and back-room deals in Brussels. It is legislation which last month the Department of Health admitted, in its impact assessment, risks increasing, not reducing, the amount of smoking. 

Vaping is therefore a public health triumph that the Department of Health has, to its extreme shame, done its utmost to block. In 2010, the department’s medicines regulator, the MHRA, tried to ban vaping devices completely. In 2013, the agency - which is financed largely by the pharmaceutical industry - tried to insist that every e-cigarette should be licensed as a medicine. This would again have amounted to a de facto ban.

This cuts to the heart of the repulsive truth about 'public health', there is more emphasis on vested interests and ideological fuckwittery than there is about scrutinising if their pre-determined policies will have a beneficial or adverse effect on the public's health. As such, they are happy to indulge in junk science, mendacious policy recommendations and corrupt legislative processes. They have always been like that, it's just it hasn't been so transparent until e-cigs came along. They've been caught not only with their pants down but also, arguably, with their hands in the till.

It's also interesting to note that the 'public health' community, almost to a man, despises big business and industry, yet are so dogmatically driven that they always end up entrenching the industries they despise at the expense of the public's well-being, enjoyment of life and, yes, health.

Lord Callanan

I have to say that we were not particularly helped by Department of Health officials. I tried to speak to Ministers many times to find out who was behind the restrictions and why there was such a campaign against something which so self-evidently provides great public health benefits and harm-reduction measures, but I never got a clear answer. 

Funny that, eh?

I was pointed to a recording of a former public health Minister appearing in front of the European Scrutiny Committee of the House of Commons. When she was asked why she voted for this directive on behalf of the Government, she turned to her officials and said “I think the e-cigarette provisions were removed from it, weren’t they?” - which showed a worrying lack of understanding of what she was voting for on behalf of the Government.

Yes, and if you haven't seen it before, you can watch it here.

Callanan continued ...

My noble friend Lord Ridley is quite right to point out the somewhat murky role of various pharmaceutical interests in the production of the directive. When I asked questions in the Commission and the Council - it seemed to me self-evident that these devices were brilliant for reducing tobacco smoking, which I thought was what we all wanted - I asked why they were even in the directive in the first place, given that it is called a tobacco products directive and e-cigarettes are not tobacco products in any sense of the word. The answer I received many times was that this was argued for by the pharmaceutical industry, which would have an awful lot to lose if e-cigarettes supplanted or replaced nicotine patches and gum. I do not know the truth of that, but it seems that it was very successful in getting what it wanted.

This is a quite astounding thing for a Lord (and ex-Conservative MEP) to say in a publicly-broadcast committee hearing. It suggests that the TPD was drafted with cronyism front and centre, and he was not shy in publicising it.

This is what the tobacco control industry was backing. A directive designed not on the basis of health, but by pharmaceutical lobbyists. I've said before that many tobacco controllers deserve to do jail time, and this seems to confirm that I'm right. Will there be an investigation into such allegations? Well there very much needs to be, but I'm sure the vile elitist 'public health' cabal will close ranks; have a few words in a few influential ears; and make sure they go unpunished for their actions.

We are certainly not going to give that message [of the relative safety of e-cigs - DP] by banning 90% of advertising, nor by insisting on e-cigarette packaging carrying big health warnings, which is what the Government are asking us to approve in these regulations. The Royal College of Physicians described the imposition of these warnings as “illogical”, bearing in mind that nicotine patch boxes do not have to warn of the dangers of nicotine.

Fancy that!

Callanan deliciously aimed a well-observed swipe at ASH and their industry-centric prejudices during his speech.

The messages that we give really matter. In the complex decisions that smokers make every day about whether to smoke or consume nicotine through much cleaner forms, their perceptions of the relative risks of these products are crucial. The Royal College of Physicians, Public Health England and Action on Smoking and Health have all raised deep concerns about how smokers perceive e-cigarettes to be much more risky than they actually are. It is very interesting that Action on Smoking and Health should now say that, because I recall that that was not the message that it was giving when we dealt with the directive.

Nope. ASH didn't study e-cigs with any degree of objectivity when they first arrived on the scene. In fact, in 2010 they demanded that the devices should be compelled to be deemed as medical products or banned entirely in an MHRA consultation response. This should never be forgotten; ASH sway with the wind so their current supposed "supportive" stance towards vaping is purely a convenient position of least resistance, I wouldn't put it past them to jump to an opposite position the moment they think the wind is changing. They are certainly no credible friend of the vaper. Indeed, I understand that they are cheerleaders for the TPD which was being unanimously ridiculed during this Lords committee. Speaks volumes doesn't it?

Callanan also had a few stiff words to direct at the most appalling "Science Editor" in the world.

Much of the problem stems from media reporting of junk science. The worst example was a headline in the Telegraph in December, which screamed: 

“E-cigarettes are no safer than smoking tobacco”. 

It was a nonsense report based on, as I said, junk science.

It was indeed. He was referring to Sarah Knapton of the Telegraph who wrote an astonishingly stupid article in December which was roundly condemned as being utter garbage. She then doubled down by tweeting her ignorance too.

Another day of being trolled by vapers who refuse to accept that e-cigarettes are harmful despite mounting evidence https://t.co/557Br7fj5A

— Sarah Knapton (@sarahknapton) December 30, 2015

Her laughable scientific illiteracy is now on record for all time in the official Westminster parliamentary record thanks to Lord Callanan. I'm sure the Telegraph are very proud of her for that.

The objections just kept coming.

Earl Cathcart

Even the Prime Minister, last December, said: 

“We need to be guided by the experts, and we should look at the report from Public Health England, but it is promising that over 1 million people are estimated to have used e-cigarettes to help them quit or have replaced smoking with e-cigarettes completely. We should be making it clear that this a very legitimate path for many people to improve their health and therefore the health of the nation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 16/12/15; col. 1548.] 

Quite so. 

I do not know what my noble friend the Minister is going to say when he responds, but I expect him to support the regulations and the EU directive. There is very little else he can do. Our masters in Brussels have told us to jump and, sadly, the only thing that the British Government can do is jump - until 24 June, of course.

We can but hope.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon

That is almost impossible to believe: that a Government who have been so anti-smoking, and who have themselves brought in so many anti-smoking measures over the years—I have been involved with them for at least 25 years—should now, when we are on the brink of assisting people to give up tobacco smoking, put these very stringent restrictions upon them. Why on earth are they banning the advertising of them if they are a health benefit to people who smoke and the Government think that people ought to give up smoking? To me, that seems to be an absolutely absurd position.

Isn't it just?

The only other thing I have to say is this. I hope that the Government will listen to this debate, although in fact there is not much hope of that because in the past trying to get the Government to listen to reason is like banging your head against a brick wall.

Applause!

Lord Snape

I fear that if the Treasury acts in the way that it usually acts under any Government, it will be another excuse to tax something as heavily as possible. However, if we are serious—which we are—about weaning people off the demon that is tobacco, then banning alternative products which are proven to be less dangerous is a far from sensible way forward, and I would be interested to hear from both Front Benches why they are apparently supporting this SI.

Ooh, just a guess, but perhaps because it has nothing to do with health?

The Earl of Erroll

The final thing is that wonderful conspiracy theory: that the Treasury gets huge amounts of tax from the smokers but not from the vapers, so the Treasury may rather see us smoking than see vaping take off, and that the Government have a vested interest in making sure that this directive goes through unchanged to prevent vaping. Maybe they should declare that every time they try to promote the directive.

This is a quite fantastic point. The government has signed up to Article 53 of the FCTC which states that the tobacco industry should be excluded from discussions on anything related to tobacco control because they have a financial interest, yet the biggest profiteer from smoking is the government itself, to the tune of £12bn per annum.

It is also arguably true that anti-smoking organisations are part of the tobacco industry too, as MSP Jackson Carlaw highlighted in November.

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

The fact is - I speak as president of the RSPH - that some elements in the public health world were prejudiced from the start against e-cigarettes. That clearly influenced the Department of Health and is the reason why it has taken such a mealy-mouthed approach to e-cigarettes, which is simply not based on evidence at all. It is interesting that, if you look at some of the papers produced by public health bodies, there are some weaselly words around this issue: “We still don’t know and we need to be very careful”. They are really trying to find a legitimisation for the initial very negative reaction, which I am afraid has laid the foundations for where we are today, because this is bonkers. It is simply madness. Here we have a product which is clearly of benefit to smokers and there is no evidence whatever that it will be used by non-smokers, which is where all this nonsense has come from. 

I do not understand why [e-cigs] are part of the directive at all or classified in the same way.

Nor do we, sunshine. Nor do we. Though from what Callanan revealed earlier in proceeedings, I think we have some clues.

After such a barrage, when Lord Prior finally rose to give the government's position he looked visibly rocked and distinctly uncomfortable.

My Lords, I do not know whether to thank my noble friend Lord Ridley for bringing this debate here today or not. The arguments that have been put have been very powerful and it would be obtuse of me to say otherwise.

Yes it would, but he's going to have to defend the TPD - which was incompetently and corruptly drafted - anyway.

[T]here are three ways of trying to influence the behaviour of people doing things that do harm: you can punish them; you can hector them; or you can try to offer safer alternatives.

There is a fourth alternative of course. You could consider leaving them alone to make their own decisions, but then what government ever does that?

In the case of tobacco we have tried all three things. We have penalised people through taxation, we have hectored them incessantly for years

Nice of a Conservative to admit that the government is a rancid cesspit of bullies.

What the directive is trying to do, though it may not be doing it well, is to differentiate between smokers and non-smokers, particularly non-smokers under the age of 18. It wants to encourage information being given to smokers but does not want to risk the unintended consequence of normalizing vaping so that people who do not smoke start doing so. That is the purpose behind it.

"Though it may not be doing it well". So kick it into the long grass then. Ignore it. Oh, hold on, you can't can you?

The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, asked how much money would be spent on public information. If there is evidence that the impact on advertising is such that smokers are not getting the right information about switching to e-cigarettes or vaping then there will be a strong case for a public information campaign to correct that, but we will have to wait and see what impact the directive has.

Brilliant! E-cig companies have been advertising to willing consumers for years and it hasn't cost the taxpayer a penny. So let's ban it and spend sparse tax receipts during a time of austerity on that instead. What a fucking car crash that is.

It would be a massive unintended consequence if, as a result of this directive, fewer people gave up smoking.

It would indeed, but an angry looking Lord Lawson - former Chancellor of the Exchequor - rose to remonstrate on this point.

It may well be unintended. I would not know the intentions of the curious people who devised this measure, but it is certainly an inevitable consequence, and it is the consequence that matters, not the intention.

Quite. And this is the crux of the matter. Will the TPD be beneficial for public health or will it not?

The government, anti-smoking organisations and the EU all know very well that the TPD will have a negative effect, but they really don't care. In fact, just today Clive Bates has written about how the tobacco control industry is totally unconcerned about the adverse consequences their tax-sponging actions will cause.

Tuesday's Lords committee was an example of how poor tobacco control legislation always is. Even the government's spokesman admitted as much, but that his hands were tied because there is nothing he can do about it since it emanates from the EU. The fact that it is counterproductive, corruptly drafted and applied, and detrimental to public health is pretty irrelevant to him and the repellent people behind the TPD. But Lord Prior knows very well that the Lords who stood up to him the other day have no power; the committee is just one of many talking shops which happen in Westminster on a daily basis. All the Lords' concerns will be ignored and the TPD will be installed as UK law without question. It's just the crooked way that our supposed democracy works.

I've said it many times and I'll say it again. This is why I love e-cigs, because they are exposing the plankton who have always been this way, nasty, self-serving, snobby and devoid of care for the public. It's never been about health, as we know, but now there are many Lords who have noticed that too.  

Institutional Snobbery

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Simon Cooke sums up the vile principle very well here.

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

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

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

Fat Budgets And Fake Friends

Next time you hear some local authority rubber band-flicker whining about how government 'cuts' are slashing their resources to the bare bones, remind yourself of this.

Via Taking Liberties, it seems that despite 'savage' austerity measures, Aberdeenshire Council still has a budget fat enough to come up with sinister, absurd and utterly pointless new policies like this.

A Scottish council is looking to ban people from smoking in their own vehicles if they are on local authority land. 

Aberdeenshire Council has drafted a revised smoking policy that aims to ensure non-puffers are prevented from inhaling toxic tobacco fumes in car parks. 

Under the proposed new rules, smoking - including electronic vaporizers or 'e-cigs' - will face a blanket ban on any premises or site owned by the council even if someone lights up in a private vehicle.

Now, this isn't a reaction to public demand. Have you heard of any grassroots campaign to prohibit smoking in private vehicles in car parks? No, nor me. I'm pretty sure no-one has ever demanded that anywhere - let alone in Aberdeenshire - so why the need to waste taxpayers' money on such a stupid piece of illiberal and unenforceable garbage? Especially since if there was any call whatsoever for such a policy it would have originated from one of the tax-sponging sock puppet bullies in the bloated, anti-social and entirely wasteful tobacco control industry.

No, this is just a bunch of state-funded troughers sitting around trying to dream up something - anything, however flimsy the justification - to keep themselves on the tax-funded gravy train.

They are quite literally collectively pissing your taxes down the drain and then squealing that government is really mean for making cuts. Well of course cuts are urgently necessary if there is still enough in their coffers to pay for egregious lunacy like this.

And it is lunacy, as I explained early last year regarding a similar proposal.

The move – which has been introduced as part of plan to create a tobacco-free generation by 2034 – also bans patients and staff from smoking in their cars on hospital ­property.

For the education of any bemused alien life forms who might be scanning our internet, these are cars which are allowed on NHS property.

And this is a cigarette - which is banned for polluting the lungs of hospital visitors - being smoked ... in a car. I've highlighted it in red in case you can't see it.

Turn the spaceships round, fellas, we're not worth conquering, believe me.

It's also worth remembering what ASH Scotland's Sheila Duffy said about that policy at the time, too.

Ms Duffy said: “We want people to understand why the policy is there in the first place. At the moment, seeing smokers is a part of life but that is changing. 

“It is not a habit that smokers want for their children. 

“The aim is to put it out of fashion for the next generation and send a clear message that smoking is incompatible with health.”

This is Sheila Duffy, of the supposedly vape-friendly ASH Scotland, by the way. The same ASH Scotland which gave the Press and Journal's version of this story top billing in their daily bulletin today despite e-cigs being included in the 'ban'.

It's interesting that Simon Clark states that he was approached for a quote on Friday, so you'd have to assume Sheila Duffy and ASH Scotland were well aware of the story too. Yet they have been studiously silent on the matter despite it being reported in the Scottish Daily Mail, The Press and Journal, the Evening Express and The Herald. A very strange thing for an organisation solely paid to talking about smoking to do, don't you think?

Just like their equally insipid and manipulative pretend 'vape-friendly' colleagues in ASH London and ASH Wales, they sit idly by as another ban is inflicted on e-cigs. The only difference is that they didn't actively applaud this policy like ASH and their Welsh equivalent did.

So, considering the silence, we must assume that condemning bans on e-cig use is so very difficult for ASH Scotland that they are content with sacrificing vaping for the greater good, and have learned just to stay silent instead.

Or perhaps, to paraphrase Duffy's justification for outdoor smoking bans, she quietly believes e-cigs should be included in bans. Maybe she thinks that:

"We want people to understand why the policy is there in the first place. At the moment, seeing vapers is a part of life but that needs to change.  

“It is not a habit that vapers want for their children. 

"The aim is to put it out of fashion for the next generation and send a clear message that vaping is incompatible with car parks."

Perhaps someone might like to ask ASH Scotland precisely why their claimed support for harm reduction doesn't extend to actually doing anything about it ... rather like ASH and ASH Wales, in fact.

In the meantime, can we have more austerity please George? There is quite clearly still billions of pounds of irrelevant state-funded flab to be cut. As well as socially-damaging - and selectively indolent - sock puppet fake charity tax-spongers, it appears quite a few highly-paid pen-pushers in Aberdeenshire Council are also long overdue their P45s on this showing.

Surreal Stuff In The Lords

I case you missed it, there was something of a Twilight Zone moment in the House of Lords the other day.

It started mundanely enough, with Viscount Ridley raising the thorny issue of the EU proposing to tax e-cigs.

Given that the Prime Minister said in the other place that 1 million people have given up smoking as a result of taking up vaping— including, I believe, my noble friend Lord Brabazon of Tara—given that the public health benefits are in the order of £74 billion, and given that the main loser from this is the pharmaceutical industry, which is seeing falls in the sales of patches and gums, does he agree with me that pharmaceutical industry lobbying may be behind the attempt to regulate these products too heavily and possibly to shackle them with an excise tax? 

This was quite clearly referring to moves - highlighted in The Times - to bring e-cigs into the scope of the Tobacco Duties Directive.

But perhaps Lord Prior of Brampton - replying on behalf of the government - doesn't read The Times, because he must have believed Ridley was talking about the TPD instead.

The tobacco regulation that the noble Viscount refers to does not have any proposals for an excise tax - it purely relates to ensuring that these products are used safely and are of a given quality.

No, the Tobacco Duties Directive does actually deal with excise tax, strangely enough, and was actually what Ridley was referring to.

It then got weirder.

My Lords, the Minister will know that the impact of this directive is to make it much more difficult for e-cigarettes to be promoted. Why is that, given the clear benefit to public health?

This, believe it or not, was from Labour Lord Hunt, the party's health spokesman in the Lords, no less ... the day before his party voted to ignore the "clear benefit to public health" in Wales and in fact deny it as "evidence-free" and "nonsensical".

Lord Hunt was backed up by Lord Brabazon, another Labour Lord.

My Lords, I have already been mentioned during this Question. I am one of those who smoked for many years but has not have a cigarette now for two years because I have taken up using one of these devices. Can my noble friend tell me why these devices are included at all in the tobacco products directive, because they are not a tobacco product?

Ooh please Sir! I can answer that one. It's because there is a hideous mare in Labour's EU contingent of MEPs called Linda McAvan who fought like stink to ensure that they were. Why would a Labour Lord not know that, huh?

Next up was then Lib Dem Baroness Walmsley. You know, from the party which officially endorsed e-cigs in their manifesto and whose Welsh representatives bravely tried to head off the stupidity of a vaping ban in public places there. She'll be sound, won't she?

My Lords, although these products are clearly much less harmful than smoking tobacco, they are not entirely harmless. They have a lot of noxious chemicals in them.

Erm, everything has noxious chemicals in it, dear. I swear I heard Paracelsus chuckle when reading that bit.

Another Labour Lord - Lord Turnberg - then piped up with this.

My Lords, the noble Lord dismissed the idea of an excise tax, but there is a strong rumour that the EU intends to impose a tax on these products. Will the Government do everything they can to counteract this counterproductive suggestion?

Well, Turnberg my pusscake friend, if Labour hadn't done "everything they can" and voted en masse to ensure a "counterproductive" TPD was passed without even knowing the first thing about e-cigs, perhaps we wouldn't be in the position with them being crowbarred into the Tax Directive, now would we? Just a thought.

Meanwhile, Tory Lord Prior continued to miss the point.

My Lords, as I said, there is no proposal for an excise duty as part of the tobacco directive, as I understand it.

There's a Products Directive and then there's a Tax Directive, you chump. Please try to wake up, you're part of the government for crying out loud.

Good grief. These people are entrusted with running the country and they barely know what's happening around them! A fox could wander in and nick their marmite sarnies and I fancy they'd be none the wiser.

The issue of passive vaping was broached by Lord Naseby, and the correct reply given by Prior.

My Lords, I think there is evidence that e-cigarettes are more effective than, or as effective as, nicotine replacement therapies, and that my noble friend is right that there is no danger from passive smoking, which is why the inability to smoke in public places does not apply to e-cigarettes.

Really, Lord Prior? Then why is it that parasites funded by the government are enthusiastically welcoming their prohibition in public places all over the United Kingdom? Perhaps there is a tax tap there that requires turning off, I dunno.

UKIP Lord Rannoch asked a pertinent question too.

My Lords, do we really need this sort of interfering directive from Brussels? Are we incapable of looking after vaping devices ourselves?

Of course we're not, but the EU won't allow us to. Simple.

Lastly, Conservative peer Lord Forsyth stated the bleeding obvious ...

My Lords, is it not perfectly obvious that big business is lobbying Brussels to shut out competition, that e-cigarettes cost less, which limits the impact of highly regressive taxes on tobacco, and that they enable people to save their health? Will my noble friend admit that the Government are powerless to do anything about this?

... to everyone except Lord Prior.

No, I do not admit that the Government are powerless to do anything about this.

Yes you are chum. You can't refuse to implement the TPD and when (not if) the EU impose duty on e-cigs in their directive, you won't be able to do anything about that either. In fact, George Osborne will most likely do a jig.

You can watch the whole thing here courtesy of @dnglos. Try to keep the facepalming to a minimum.