Blame Those Evil Fireworks

Lewes bonfire sees dozens injured in firework accidents

Ambulance workers treated 170 people, with 22 being taken to hospital, as more than 60,000 people took to the streets of Lewes for bonfire night.

Alternatively, 59,830 people (or 99.7%) had a great time without any problem whatsoever.

But then, how else can Nanny Beeb build a scare except by emblazoning a headline based on 0.3% of attendees.

This isn't entirely new behaviour by our 'man bites dog' media - extreme minority football and music concert violence in the 80s were similarly treated - but it goes a long way to explain why we now have a population cowed and quivering over even the most trivial of risks. Something that vested interest alarmists play on at every opportunity. I expect we'll be hearing the annual calls for banning fireworks in the coming days.

Especially in the aftermath of this.

Police probing the M5 crash which killed seven people have said a firework display next to the road is the "major line of inquiry".

Assistant Chief Constable Anthony Bangham, of Avon and Somerset Police, said he was focusing on the event held on Friday night.

He said "a bank of smoke" was across the M5 at the time of the crash.

Because this had nothing to do with it, obviously.

"I'd slowed right down and had veered into the central reservation and I think that saved our lives - the fog lifted and I saw utter carnage.

"The thing that made me realise how bad it was, was you could hear the thud of cars hitting into lorries.

"One car overtook us going at about 60 or 70 miles an hour and just crashed straight into a lorry."

It was a tragic incident, and I'm certainly not saying that every vehicle involved was being driven irresponsibly, but - in light of the police description of the conditions - it's clear from the above that at least some were. If visibility was so atrocious, how on earth could anyone judge that 60 or 70 was a suitable speed?

It will play right into the hands of those who constantly tell us that 'speed kills', but it should be a perfect example of why the likes of Longrider - who comments regularly on the issue of vehicular speed - has been correct all along on the matter, as he was again today.

[...] the speed limit was not a factor. It doesn’t matter whether the maximum is 70mph, 80mph or 180mph; in dense fog, the appropriate speed is that in which you can stop in the distance you can see to be clear.

Indeed. It could be just as easily argued that the reason many were driving at such speeds is that the state has decided that it is uniquely qualified to dictate the safe speed on every road in the country.

'Speed Kills' is the mantra which is employed to tell us that 20mph is the uppermost 'safe' speed on certain urban roads in clear daytime conditions, despite the fact that most consider it hysterically slow. When many know full well that it's safe for a vigilant driver to be travelling faster than that, and that a 20mph limit is there to eliminate all risk. Well, it surely follows that 70mph on a motorway is perfectly safe until the state says otherwise ... even if in dense fog and with smoke billowing across the carriageway! Doesn't it?

There seems to be a lack of recognition for personal responsibility at play here, in both cases. The Lewes article tends to read as if fireworks themselves are the problem, rather than people using them irresponsibly. While the M5 crash looks like being 'blamed' on a local fireworks display, despite evidence that some were driving appallingly in the conditions.

Still, fireworks are going to get it in the neck, and RoSPA are already banging on about speed itself - and not the state's incremental confiscation of self awareness and judgement - being to blame.

Contrary to Justine Greening's opinion ...

Transport Secretary Justine Greening said on Saturday it was too early to consider what measures could be taken to prevent similar accidents.

... shit sometimes happens, and the best solution is not always more laws or restrictions.

An educated public being encouraged to look after themselves, rather than rely on being spoon-fed one-size-fits-all 'safety' instructions from the state, will always be far more effective than kneejerk sticking plaster legislation.

Not that the average political mind will ever recognise that, of course.

Link Tank 05/11

'Ere y'are.

Woman arrested for 'trespassing' in a public park, and not carrying ID

Fat tax: Does obesity really cost society a fortune?

End parking lot socialism

Why you should be drinking cheap wine

David Goerlitz, former Winston Man, attacks the bullshit in tobacco, anti-smoking AND e-cig industries

White House rejects pleas to legalise marijuana

Iranian footballers face public lashing for goal celebration

Judge rules music piracy may boost sales

Many US states require vendors to declare if their house is haunted

Sabre-toothed squirrels

The Beauty Of Health

You may have noticed output to have been sparse here of late, I'm afraid this is down to a general build-up of real life interference. It's likely to be the same for another week, I reckon. Tomorrow is especially problematic since a school reunion dinner beckons, which I'm sincerely hoping won't cause the red mistometer to bubble if discussion turns to politics with friends I haven't seen for at least a couple of decades.

Still, I did come across this amusing comparison today which is currently doing the rounds on a US site. They're being treated (if that's the word) to a glimpse of UK health nutter and all-round moron Gillian McKeith, who featured on these pages last November.

(Click to enlarge)

It's a trifle inaccurate though. Lawson is, indeed, 51 ... McKeith was 52 in September. Well, that explains everything, doesn't it?

H/T

The Precedent That Keeps On Taking Liberties

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about tobacco control being discussed at an Irish obesity conference.

THE SMOKING ban has not had any appreciable effect on the number of smokers in Ireland, the chief medical officer at the Department of Health has said.

At a forum on obesity yesterday, Dr Tony Holohan said ...

Obesity? Why are you talking about the smoking ban at an obesity forum then, Tony?

He also said there was a need to look at the inter-relationship between different lifestyle factors, including tobacco use, alcohol consumption and obesity, and their effects on health.

“People who smoke just don’t smoke, they are also people who are overweight and they are also people who are high consumers of alcohol and we need to understand the interaction of those,” Dr Holohan said.

Well, how about this? In Canada yesterday, we see obesity being discussed at a tobacco control conference!

"Reductions in smoking are largely the result of specific policy interventions, with price increases through tobacco taxation being most effective," continued [Dr. David Hammond, associate professor at the University of Waterloo School of Public Health and Health Systems]. "Along with changes in where you can smoke, how tobacco companies can market products, and how smoking risk is communicated to the consumer, these interventions have helped reduce smoking prevalence in Canada from 50 per cent in 1960's to 17 per cent in 2010."

Hammond believes that similar policy interventions could lead to a major change in obesity rates among Canadians, and he is not alone in this opinion. Tobacco control professionals from across Canada are gathering to share information and lessons learned with delegates working on obesity prevention.

Through the exchange of knowledge, particularly what worked and did not work for tobacco control, the goal of reducing obesity rates in Canada through policy intervention can get a head start.

That bashing of smokers by those who don't personally partake doesn't seem so wise now, does it? It was only supposed to be those malodorous nicotine addicts in the cross hair, after all. Unlike normal people who enjoy other vices, smokers were a unique problem ... weren't they?

Oh how those who enjoy other vices laughed when we warned them that they would be next, and that their collaboration would come back and bite them on their lardy behinds; or the inebriates on their drooping todger; and that the anti-tobacco precedent would be employed to do so.

Suck it up, wobble-bottomed smokerphobes. Eat reality along with your Cripple Cock, CAMRA. The beast you helped spawn is sharing tips and mass producing finger-waggers tailored specifically for the task of denormalising YOU!

One day, you'll work out that perhaps you should have stood up for smokers - thereby also protecting yourselves for the future - while you had the chance. Your intolerant prejudices opened the floodgates, and now 'public health' hectors are swarming all over the less-than-healthy pleasure that you enjoy.

We did warn the irresponsible, short-sighted idiots. Sadly, they didn't listen, and many will fail to see the connection even when professional scaremongers are crawling all over newly denormalised free choices, conjuring up images of dead children and demanding unconditional abstinence.

The new puritan alliance is up and running now, and the baton they are carrying was supplied by anyone who has ever blithely approved of bans, restrictions, or any other state-led sanctions against substances or practices which they don't personally like.

Divide et impera, I think they call it.

All that's left now is to watch for respective appeasers in each targeted group to come out and give a little ground in the hope of being left alone (oh look, here they are already) but - as smokers are well aware - this is simply not on the wider agenda for prohibitionists. The best example of this comes from ASH's Beyond Smoking Kills report which came after, remember, the implementation of a smoking ban many myopic smokers thought was worth supporting in order to shut them up.

Some smokers may feel that enough has been done to restrict their behaviour and that they should be left alone to enjoy the choices they freely make. Yet this misses the point.

Indeed it does. The 'point' is that these evil nags will never stop.

They were never going to stop once smoking had been denormalised, they were inevitably going to extend their appalling anti-social nature to the users of other unapproved products. And they will never be satisfied with any achievement, however radical or ground-breaking it may be. There will always, but always, be the 'next logical step' towards ultimate prohibition.

Bansturbators aren't even hiding the fact that they're ganging up, globally, anymore. Any chance some of the blinkered in other camps might wake up and do likewise in opposition sometime soon?

Nah, didn't think so.

The ASH Bullshit Roadshow Is A Hit In Lancashire

I was amused to read The Moose deconstructing a woeful article in some Godforsaken northern rag, where scary numbers are offered as solid proof - dagnabbit - that smoking costs the local economy a fortune even after taking duty into account.

The problem with this is that the anti-smoking Brothers and Sisters Grimm have always struggled to make this financial fairy tale stick ... partly down to the fact that it's transparent bullshit, especially since taxes are many times the order of externality costs because of the bleating of anti-smokers themselves. So, the general approach has usually been to ignore duty altogether and just keep banging on about costs.

In fact, the only study which attempted to tackle this gaping hole in the tobacco control lie machine was one by Policy Exchange last year. You may remember it, but if not, let's recap.

It was written by a righteous berk called Henry Featherstone who shared top table with the ASH menagerie at their AGM (berk is to the left) ...


... and tweeted about his intention before writing it.


It was laughably poor - as I went into at length when it was published - and was promptly ignored as such by an overwhelming majority of the national media (yes, even the BBC). It was, however, destroyed by Policy Exchange's customary allies, and the berk left the think tank soon after, presumably for being exposed as a weapons grade fuck up.

ASH have gamely tried to perpetuate this nonsensical work of fiction from time to time, but it's not difficult to see past its limitations as I described last October when it turned up in some obscure health industry newsletter.

I comprehensively explained at the time precisely why his calculations were little better than those of a nose-picking 10 year old, and suspiciously like an advert for Champix/Varenicline and Pfizer who manufacture it.

The figures haven't changed, he still ignores savings on pensions, still reiterates sunk costs such as street cleaning, still hasn't tidied up the massive over-exaggeration of loss to GDP (apparently, Henry believes that smokers earn, on average, £725,000 per annum), is still unaware of the existence of the insurance industry, and still attaches no value on the enjoyment that renders smokers happy to pay a premium on their supplies, a general 'given' amongst free marketeers, surely.

Why is this relevant, I hear you ask? Well, the figures quoted in the Moose's referenced article do seem very similar.

All the same canards are there - sick days; unbelievably whopping figures for loss of productivity through smoke breaks and early death; the fable of death by passive smoking; idiotic rubbish clearance cost; and fires. Plus, there is the same lack of accounting for pension savings from the early deaths the same article portrays as being solely a cost, and a disregard of tobacco's multi-factorial contribution to Lancashire's economy.

It was also furnished by ASH, an aspect which didn't overly concern the dozy hack who rattled off the article before no doubt lolling back in his chair, flicking a rubber band and farting. It should have done, since this would appear to be merely our country's leading light in twisting fantasy into fact taking Henry Featherstone's creaking innumeracy on the road.

The assistant director for Lancashire Public Health Network, Paula Hawley-Evans, welcomed the tool.

No, she's not talking about Henry himself - she is probably unaware of his part in this - but instead some localised re-jigging of a national fable which the MSM rightly ignored.

One assumes it was fired off to lazy local health lobbyists and newsmongers nationwide, hoping that figures tailored to their area might generate a few column inches for a thoroughly debunked concept.

But who is this going to fool? It's such execrable garbage that one has to be an intellectual midget to believe it.

Health watchdog, councillor Ron O’Keeffe, said he was horrified by the figures.

The chairman of the borough’s health overview and scrutiny committee said: “The figures are atrocious and frightening."

Ah, of course. I forgot that local politicians are even more disastrously gullible than national ones.

Sadly for the country's hopes of exiting this recession soon, local business leaders aren't too bright either.

[Mike Damms, chief executive of the East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, said:] " ... overall I agree with the sentiment of the report and we’re not surprised the cost is high as smoking-related illness is the predominant self-inflicted reason for absence from work.”

Yes. The epidemic of Monday morning sickies from excessive consumption of Mayfairs is almost unanimously accepted, didn't you know?

It's a sneaky ploy by ASH to take a nationally disregarded pile of junk - which they will certainly have had a hand in fabricating producing - and break it down into regionalised chunks for journos bored of lost cat stories to publish, for the unquestioning belief by low-grade politicians and the terminally local credulous.

Now, I wonder why regional newspapers are in such a mess? Couldn't have anything to do with their inability to sort fact from professionally disseminated vested interest garbage, could it?

One Last Push

Broadband has been down at Puddlecote Towers since Friday night, so I've been out of the loop somewhat and unable to write this tabloid gibber. Instead, I've had to watch that telly thing in the corner (tell me, is Ross Kemp ever not in Afghanistan?), which means I've had a lot of sleep.

Normal disservice will be resumed soon but, in the meantime, the Spectator's parliamentarian of the year nominations close tomorrow. So please consider chucking a vote the way of our esteemed blog mascot if you haven't done so already.

You could mention Philip Davies's stance on the EU (against), his action towards nannyism on tobacco and alcohol this year (against), or just that he's been an all-round good egg by opposing the righteous and defending personal liberties. Your choice.

To do so, just click here and nominate away.

G'wan, it'll only take a minute.

Link Tank 29/10

Filling up your senses like a greasy chip buttie.

Haven't Irish patients suffered enough without this hospital smoking ban?

The horrors of Halloween advice despite it being ...

... The safest day of the year

Jamie Oliver "would be far less irritating if he stopped moralising and crusading"

Why fingers go wrinkly in the bath

The legend of the patriotic drinker

Chicago may deciminalise marijuana

Canadian schools ban scary Halloween costumes in favour of 'caring' ones

Strawberries protect the stomach against alcohol

Elk group sex