So Long And Thanks For All The Furballs

As mentioned this time last week, content has been sparse here of late which - after checking my calendar for the week ahead - is a trend which looks like continuing for a few more days at least. My evening schedule for the next seven days consists of an end of term presentation at the girl's school; a cricket match with the boy; a celebration meal with extended family; Forest's excellent Freedom Dinner; and our company's eighth annual summer party.

Regular readers may have noticed the lack of a link tank yesterday too. This was due to our being preoccupied with a pretty nasty Saturday.

RIP our beautiful cat who went to sleep today after 16 wonderful years. We miss him terribly already.
— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) July 12, 2014

As you can imagine, this had a lot to do with why tumbleweed was billowing around this place in the days that preceded it.

We only had our first idea that something was amiss on Monday - the second day that the old fella had left his food untouched but was sucking up water like a sponge. It's not like him at all so I prepared myself for the usual fierce battle to get him into the cat carrier and down the vet's Tuesday morning, only to watch him walk in without a fuss the moment I opened the front grille!

On hearing that he wasn't eating, the vet's brow furrowed and she suggested he be kept in overnight for blood tests. The next day I received a series of phone calls checking agreement for further tests, an ultrasound, and x-rays - complete with an ever-mounting bill - which eventually led on Wednesday evening to a crushing diagnosis.

Fears that it might be something wrong with kidneys, liver or perhaps pancreas were well-founded as it turned out his insides were all screwed. His 16+ years had caught up with him in an all-too-sudden way.

We were given steroids and antibiotics to try to alleviate the symptoms but he was having none of it, refusing to eat even his version of crack cocaine - chicken sticks and marmite - in which we could hide the tablets. At a further visit on Thursday, we were told that it "wouldn't be a wrong decision" to put him down there and then, but that a vet-administered appetite booster could help to get him eating and taking the medication. We were advised to book another appointment for Saturday morning and left in the hope that something miraculous might happen in the meantime, but knowing that it was more likely to be his last day.

So it was to be, and he fell asleep for the last time in Mrs P's arms at about midday yesterday.

It was an extremely tough day, especially due to the incredibly short lead time and since he was older than the teen kids so they'd never known what life was like without him. We'd first got him in 1998 and he was nearly two when the girl was born; and three by the time the boy arrived. In the early years he had meekly suffered the girl tying ribbons to his tail and trying to ride him like a pony; and kept his claws sheathed while the boy found it highly amusing to yank his tail or chase him around attacking him with plastic swords. Despite all that, he grew up with them and was like a third sibling.

When it all ended, the kids were crushed and tearful, and Mrs P and I were thankful for our two great friends Nick O'Teen and Al K Hall as we sat in the July sunshine and felt totally flattened.

What surprised us though, was the reaction of our neighbours. We've had a steady procession visiting here to tell us how sad they were to hear of the news, along with stories such as how they'd leave a door open to empty their bins only to return and find him happily preening himself on their sofa, or how he would position himself outside their front garden to solicit strokes from visitors and passers-by alike. All of which came as a complete surprise. The general consensus was that he had installed himself as the 'owner' of the street, and that he wasn't just ours, but also partly the pet of those living near us. When we Puddlecotes were all - with very heavy hearts - getting in the car to have him put to sleep, two families came out at the allotted time to say their own goodbyes!

It's been deeply sad, but we've also experienced a great amount of pride. We've lived in rented flats and houses while the business was built up, and now in a distinctly urban mortgaged semi, and he's always lived on fast-moving main roads with cars, buses and trucks flying by, yet he was streetwise enough to live a long life of unfettered freedom before an end surrounded by those who really loved him. If I'd been offered that when he was small enough to sit on my hand in 1998, I'd have taken it in an instant.

I suppose this is a roundabout way of explaining why it's been quiet around here recently, and why it will likely be similar for the next week at least. It's only a short hiatus though, sooner or later I'll be able to actually write something on the many notes I leave myself in Blogger's drafts.

I'm beginning to think that, as the obvious tobacco/alcohol/e-cig/junk food/fizzy drink/salt/sugar/gambling industry shill that I am regularly being accused of, I'm not really worth the non-existent cheques I'm being sent, am I? For shame.

Who's Been Misleading The EU?

Now this is interesting.

European officials have been wrongly labelling e-liquid as extremely toxic. 

The civil servants had been misclassifying e-liquid as either a CLP category 2 product, alongside strychnine, or a category 3 product, alongside formaldehyde. The new report demonstrates that the acute oral and dermal toxic hazards of the strongest consumer e-liquids only merit being classed as category 4 - along with washing-up liquid - while the vast majority of e-liquid (which has nicotine concentrations below 25mg/ml or 2.5%) does not require any type of formal hazard warning.

So if mandatory toxic hazard warnings are to be required on e-liquid, the same should go for Fairy Liquid too, surely? Ha! Like we're ever going to see anything as hysterical as that from the EU.

It does beg the question as to whom the EU have been listening to if they've been proven to be so embarrassingly wrong though, doesn't it? I mean, being a huge organisation with a galactic budget they have toxicology advisers and all that jazz, so who's been feeding them duff info?

I'm sure the fact that a multi-national industry was caught lobbying the EU over the e-cigarette terms in the Tobacco Products Directive - the same industry whose products are tanking in member states due to the advent of e-cigs - has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Politicians: Please Lie Responsibly

I know it's not an earth-shattering revelation, but a Cabinet minister has been caught lying.

Desperately trying to justify poking her nose in where it has no business, Theresa May came out with this whopper yesterday.

But the Home Secretary Theresa May said: 'Alcohol-fuelled harm costs taxpayers £21 billion a year. It is therefore right that the alcohol industry is taking action to help reduce this burden, without penalising those that drink responsibly.'

Except it doesn't cost the taxpayer that amount at all, nor anything even close to it as Snowdon pointed out when Sarah Wollaston told this particular lie to the House in 2012.

This would be a reference to the British Cabinet Office report of 2003 which found a total social cost of around £18-20 billion. 

Of these costs, £4.7 billion were intangible costs (ie. they are hypothetical - they do not need to be paid by anyone, let alone the taxpayer). 

A further £5.5 billion were lost productivity costs which, again, do not represent a bill that needs to be paid. 

A further £5.1 billion were private costs related to crime which, once again, do not need to be recouped through the tax system, and the author of the report stressed repeatedly that these costs were at the absolute top end of any realistic estimate. 

The only costs which can be considered as "to the taxpayer" are £1.7 billion in healthcare and £2.2 billion in crime and punishment, but since the exchequer receives £9 billion a year in alcohol duty, that hardly makes a compelling case for a compensatory sin tax, does it?

Indeed. And it also doesn't make much of a case for a Tory-led government to applaud choice being restricted for the entire population, on the back of selective lies and a booze epidemic that quite simply isn't happening.

As he has admirably done before, our esteemed blog knight Philip Davies stuck up for common sense over puritanical finger-wagging from his own party, but what good will this petty tinkering do anyway? As was discovered when nicotine was reduced in tobacco, smokers simply smoked more to achieve the same level in their blood. So why would drinkers not react in the same way? Drinkers will self-administer just as smokers do and will simply drink more wine to reach their preferred level of intoxication - whether that be mild, merry, wobbly, shit-faced or comatose.

What I find far more worrying from a societal perspective, is why politicians are so lethally addicted to binge-lying in order to interfere in our personal choices. Perhaps we need a pressure group to wean them off this damaging behaviour by urging them to lie responsibly with a view to quitting the filthy habit altogether.

H/T RooBeeDoo via Frank Davis

Don't Mention The Costs Of Plain Packaging

If you've ventured over to Snowdon's pad today, you'll have seen that he's published a fine rant by Irish TD Finian McGrath, who included this in his list of many valid concerns about proposed plain packaging legislation (emphases mine throughout below).

Turning to the legislation, these provisions will have far-reaching implications for retailers and in their impact on jobs, cigarette smuggling and the infringement of intellectual property rights. We are being asked to support the Bill in the absence of information regarding the regulatory impact assessment that was conducted last February. 

In effect, Deputies do not know what the cost benefit and the impact of this Bill will be or if the tobacco companies sought compensation in their submissions. This information should be made available to Deputies so they know for what they are voting. Regardless of one's personal attitude to cigarettes and tobacco products, the Minister will agree that they are serious issues for all Members of the Oireachtas.

Of course they are, so it is fishy - to say the least - that the Irish government is hiding this evidence, as originally highlighted at the end of June.

Tobacco company John Player has called on the government to reveal how much plain packaging for cigarettes will cost the state. 

John Player has criticised that a Regulatory Impact Analysis carried out this year has not yet been published. 

“The Minister is expecting TDs to debate the Bill on the blind without any idea of what it might ultimately cost the State,” the company noted.

You would have thought, wouldn't you, that this is absolutely vital information, but it is being squirrelled away somewhere out of sight. In a modern age where transparency is apparently valued by, ahem, scrupulous states all across the globe, this kind of hidden information is surely unprecedented, right?

Well, no actually. Because, you see, as the Times reported in January last year, exactly the same thing happened in the UK, and - would you Adam and Eve it - in relation to exactly the same policy!

The impact assessment was given an “amber” rating by an independent committee last year, meaning that it needed more work. The Regulatory Policy Committee, a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, found that the assessment was fit for purpose but requested that it “provide more analysis to support the claim that the proposal will have an overall neutral effect on business”. 

In a separate report last March, the committee also raised specific concerns about the flaws in the department’s assessments on proposed tobacco regulations. It said that they “tended to provide a full analysis of benefits but failed to estimate the full economic costs to producers and retailers”.

What a stunning coincidence, huh? On both sides of the Irish Sea, it's evident that governments (or their civil service) simply don't want to mention the bad stuff in relation to plain packaging.

Why? Wasn't the evidence in favour rigged enough to see off the piffling effect on businesses that the tobacco control industry has consistently claimed?

Obviously not. For the simple reason that the so-called evidence for plain packaging is so incredibly weak that an honest admission of the effect on business would likely torpedo the whole thing ... so it's probably best to just hide the costs altogether until everyone forgets about them, eh?

This is why the UK government has desperately shied away from properly analysing the true impact of such a silly idea - remember that the Chantler review was specifically instructed to avoid such concerns - and why the Dáil seem to be following the same steps as Westminster to talk up benefits which no-one has been able to yet identify in Australia, while simultaneously ignoring the real, guaranteed problems plain packaging will cause.

Looks like I was correct to say in February that Ireland's plain packaging campaign appears to be following the same corrupt path as ours. Step by identically dishonest step.

Irrational Revulsion

Regular readers can't fail to have noticed that content here has been sparse of late. Well, almost non-existent is a more accurate description.

This is a result of real life in Puddlecoteville thrusting itself rudely front and centre like John Terry at an award ceremony. The fallout from four days away in Poland (see event report here) was an inevitable catching-up exercise at Puddlecote Inc, since - due to being booked way back in February - the trip just happened to coincide with necessary purchasing of four new vehicles and a renegotiation of the financing of our company premises. Most of the past week has therefore been spent by my either answering a backlog of 80 odd emails, or tip-toeing between two different bank lenders who are fighting like cats over debentures and worst-case-scenario priority over our assets (the plus side being that we traded them off against each other for mad keen interest rates). There was the odd cricket match and the usual family stuff to distract too, natch.

In the meantime, I've missed a lot but will hopefully be back on the keyboard for a few days before an even more hectic week looming from the 14th.

For a Sunday night listen though, try this half hour report on e-cigs before it is archived by the BBC website. Apart from the sensationalistic intro - where the presenter describes his "irrational revulsion" at seeing someone vaping while also displaying a herd-minded and typically hysterical nanny Beeb attitude to real tobacco smoke in the distance - it is a decent piece.

I'd urge you to don the earphones and listen to it in full, for one or more of the following points I found amusing or curious may interest you too.

Firstly, it came as a big surprise that - as mentioned around 11 minutes in - the government's Behavioural Insight Team (BIT) became aware of e-cigs as a way of "finding alternative solutions to regulation or just throwing money at problems" in 2010!

Funny that, because it was in June 2010 that the MHRA - a government body itself - threw money at a public consultation for a product they had decided was a problem, and attempted to regulate e-cigs out of existence before they knew anything at all about them.

No, really. The consultation text made it quite clear what they had planned.

In order to ensure there is no risk to public health from unlicensed products on the market that have not been assessed for safety, quality and efficacy and in the light of the developing extent of their use and familiarity we are consulting to elicit views on whether and how to bring all products containing nicotine into regulation. 

Option 1 – Whether products containing nicotine should be considered by the Agency to be medicinal products by function and, if so, whether all unlicensed NCPs should be removed from the market within 21 days. 

The MHRA’s preferred option is option 1, which is in line with current practice.

This move was only headed off by a monumental response from vapers which made it impossible for the MHRA to proceed. I don't remember the Behavioural Insight Team having anything to do with it, do you?

In fact, as described by Clive Bates in the comments here, the MHRA were still trying to nobble the consultation results even while the BIT was - apparently - identifying them as a great tool for harm reduction. Sounds like bollocks to me, but hey.

However, political douche-baggery aside, it is very encouraging that their spokesman is using hindsight so wisely here, and I reckon that this is something they could use to the government's advantage in light of May's election results. Because if the BIT think that e-cigs are such a force for good, why not advise HMG to reject entirely the EU TPD's ridiculous restrictions on them in 2016, eh? It would fit very well with the stance against interference from the EU we all voted for in May and would show the world that Cameron does actually possess a pair of balls, as well as kinda fitting in with his party's promise to abolish pointless red tape. What's not to like?

Look out also for the BBC's recognition of the dramatic effect of e-cigs around 22:00 or just before; for the accurate ridicule of provincial pillockry with the statement "policy in Wales is being driven by caution and fear"; and - for some comedy - marvel at Mad Stan Glantz say "I don't trust the tobacco companies" while being regularly caught telling huge whoppers (a character trait not missed by the BBC), and using the same fraudulent methods as other proven liars.

If your curiosity has been piqued, do pour your favourite beverage and go listen to the programme here.

Link Tank 05/07

I've had an incredibly busy week, hence the lack of content. Normal tabloid junk will resume soon.

Anyone saying beer is cheaper than water "doesn’t understand GCSE Maths"

Surprise! Dope smokers are fun, listen to rap and, err, smoke dope

UK porn filters block one fifth of all websites

Aussie café names menu item "diabetes", outrage ensues

"True danger lies in the notion that the state should decide if you are parenting your kids correctly"

How British liberals sold out free speech

Some Americans really don't get the 4th of July (pic)

A guide to children in pubs

Wasp beer

Win With Dick!

How about this? I've got you a prize to win.

The makers of the new Puritane disposable e-cig recently sent me a couple of samples to try. Not being a user of disposables myself, I asked my London black cabbie family member - who buys one every day - to road test them and give me a review. Being free-spirited as those in his trade tend to be, though ... I didn't hear a peep out of him!

In the end I finally tracked him down for his in-depth analysis; "yeah, they're all right, got any more?", which I suppose could be construed as a recommendation of sorts, I dunno. Still, hopefully some of you could offer more enlightening opinions because the company has kindly supplied some for readers of this blog.

So to win one of these ...

... have a think about this question:

"Which national High Street chemist chain began stocking Puritane products in February?"

Enter your answer in the box below (if I've done it right) to claim one of 50 Puritane 16mg disposable e-cigarettes for yourself.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Closing date for entries is 31st July or when they're all snapped up.