THE CLUB’S AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

THE CLUB IS A GROUP OF PEOPLE WHO DETEST THE SMOKING BAN. WE DO NOT AGREE THAT SECOND HAND TOBACCO SMOKE IS DANGEROUS.

WE WANT THE LAW TO BE AMENDED SO THAT PUBLICANS AND OTHERS CAN PROVIDE FACILITIES FOR THEIR SMOKING CUSTOMERS. WE WANT AN END TO THE PERSECUTION OF PEOPLE WHO ENJOY TOBACCO.

WHY NOT GROW YOUR OWN CIGARETTE TOBACCO? IT IS PERFECTLY LEGAL. SEE SIDEBAR FOR EASY-TO-FOLLOW GUIDE! OR GO DIRECTLY TO THE SITE:

https://growingandcuringtobacco.wordpress.com/

TOBACCO GROWING DIARY 2012 (SEE SIDEBAR).

TOBACCO GROWING DIARY 2013 (SEE SIDEBAR).

THE McTEAR v IMPERIAL TOBACCO (2005) CASE – SEE SIDEBAR.

DOLL AND HILL ‘HOSPITAL STUDY’ (SMOKING AND LUNG CANCER) (1950) – SEE SIDEBAR.

DOLL AND HILL ‘DOCTORS STUDY’ (1951 – 2001) – SEE SIDEBAR.

Tobacco CONTROL tactics. (tctactics.org) HOW TOBACCO CONTROL DECEIVES. (See sidebar).

“SMOKERS BLACK LUNG” IS A FRAUD. See this post by Frank Davis:

http://cfrankdavis.wordpress.com/2012/08/06/the-black-lung-lie/

NB. BECAUSE OF SPAM, COMMENT ON POSTS WILL CLOSE AFTER SEVEN DAYS. PLEASE FEEL FREE TO COMMENT ON OLDER POSTS ON MY LATEST POST (simply reference to the title and date of the older post).

 

 

‘No Smoking’ Signs

I have never attended a hospital so many time in my life as I have this last twelve months.

Generally speaking, you only pay attention to those matters which immediate impact your needs. EG, “Where is ward C?”. You ‘blank’ everything else. But when your go repeatedly, you start to notice things.

I have noticed the proliferation of ‘No Smoking’ signs before many times but given them little thought. As you drive into along the approach to the hospital, there appears a huge sign saying, “This is a ‘smoke-free’ site”. There are also signs, attached to walls all over the hospital building outdoors, which emphasise the site ban. When I say ‘site’, I mean every inch of several acres.

For some reason, the proliferation of such notices struck me especially today. There are a number of entrances to the hospital which are not the Main Entrance. One such is close to the ward that my wife is in. I used that entrance today to go for an enjoyable smoke for a few minutes. That entrance is in a courtyard. You would not believe how many ‘Smokefree Site’ notices adorn the doors and walls of the outside of that entrance. I doubt that there are more than 15 metres between signs fastened to the walls. They are everywhere. That particular entrance is out of sight from the road, and is likely to be a spot where visitors and patients pop outside for a cig where it is not easy to see them. Thus, the proliferation of signs.

But what does it matter if they are seen?

That is the crux. Imagine a council estate which was dotted with signs saying, “This is a burglary-free site”. Would it stop thieves? But is that not the object of those signs? Is that not the purpose? Is it not intended to brainwash law-abiding smokers into believing that they are common criminals?

And is that not also the purpose of three years of delay in leaving the EU? Is it not to idea to brainwash the electorate into believing that they were wrong to vote for Brexit? Is it not to make them feel like criminals? If we look at the situation in that way, lots of events make sense. It is about how you, in your own mind, see yourself. Am I a criminal?

The word ‘criminal’ is ill-defined. I’m not quite sure that it means anything at all these days. An MP has just been found guilty of fiddling his expenses. Is he therefore a ‘criminal’? Was he a ‘criminal’ when he was doing the fiddling, or only when he was found guilty?

No wonder that MAY ET AL ignore the electorate. It’s easy, over a period of time, using propaganda, to make those people feel like criminals since they ‘did something wrong’.

I would like to see the political ‘Elite’ overthrown, sued, banished, imprisoned, exiled. Politics should NOT be a University Course. You might as well have a course called ‘How to swindle the public’.

The reality in the UK is that most people do not have time ‘to think’. That is the reason that we elect MPs. They are not just ‘representatives’. They are supposed to do the thinking for us. TV appearances by the PM are useless. It is no use writing a book after decisions have been made. The arguments must be made BEFORE the decisions are made, and each MP who voted for some new law must become accountable.

A new politics is on the horizon, but we do not yet know what form it will take.

The Brexit Swamp

Is there any better example of ‘the swamp’ than Brexit?

1. Vote against the deal agreed between May and the EU.
2. Have no deal to vote for.
3. Vote against having no deal to vote for.
4. Vote for having no deal to vote for (delaying Brexit).
5. Close down for the summer.

The big problem is that there is no ‘Her Majesty’s Opposition”. Tory and Labour are agreeing how they will proceed. Neither wants Brexit, but for different reasons. Tories for business reasons, Labour for political reasons. Both want to scupper Brexit and then fight over the EU later. It could go on for decades.

But if it comes to pass that we have EU elections, how should we vote? It is massively tempting to say, ‘don’t bother’ since refusal to be involved is a vote in itself. But that would not work. We want to oust the Lib, Lab, Con incumbents.

It is a pity that UKIP lost its way, and it is a pity that ‘The Brexit Party’ became necessary. It was revealing today that Farage said that he was not going to allow rogue elements to join The Brexit Party. Personally, I blame UKIP for allowing Carswell to change sides from Tory to UKIP. They should have told him to resign and fight a bye-election under the banner of UKIP. The disruption of UKIP was just not worth the publicity.

Perhaps UKIP and The Brexit Party should field candidates in different constituencies so that we have a choice between Tory, Labour and ‘other’.

I suppose that we must wait for developments.

 

The Brexit Fiasco.

If the shenanigans of the last three years were transferred to the stage, the ‘play’ would be described as ‘a farce’, probably starring Brian Rix as T May PM.

After three years of tooing and froing, with no clear plan, the Gov has hit the rocks of EU intransigence. What did the 400 MPs who voted to remove the possibility of ‘no deal’ expect to happen? Do those 400 MPs know something that we do not?

It is sad to see the diminution of UKIP. I watched a video of Nigel Farage this evening. Readers will know that he is a founder member of The Brexit Party. It always seems weird to me when an established party like UKIP gets involved with political blathering and elects officers which can do nothing but talk. How do such people get onto national committees and such?

I think that it is particularly sad that the members of UKIP lost their focus. The critical thing was UK independence party, and not UK nationalist party.

The problem which now arises is ‘how do we get rid of the MPs who voted against the Will of The People’? Party affiliation has nothing to do with it. Who were the actual MPs who voted to kill Brexit?

We need a GE as soon as possible. Ideally, hardly anyone would vote. That would be the best scenario. Or, any current MP who stood would be black-listed if he/she voted to kill Brexit.

But we must wait and see.

Not Much to Talk About

The world has been unusually quiet of the past few days. Yes, there has been much talk about knife crime and how the terrified authorities propose to do nothing very much, but that is fairly routine. If a yoof is going to take a knife out of his parents’ kitchen and pop it into his pocket before meeting his mates, there is not much that anyone can do about it. We have at least a dozen sharp, pointed knives which could be used as daggers. I would certainly not wish to find myself having to lock them in a safe just in case…..

ASH ET Al made a ponderous demand for the cig buying age to be raised to 21, following the USA, of course, and in accordance with the demands of their masters in the WHO, but apart from a bit of noise in the press, the demands have fallen on deaf ears so far.

Brexit has more or less dropped out of sight for now. There is still lots of blather on the net, but nothing concrete. There’s supposed to be a vote on Tuesday, I believe, but everything seems to still be up in the air. How can you have a ‘meaningful’ vote on maybes and possibilities?

Would it not be very nice if all those noises and demands were quietened? It would be very easy. Long before ‘Public Health England’ was invented, women especially were always going on diets. As a child, I remember my mother going on a diet. She eschewed butter and used margarine, and she eschewed potatoes. She did not snack. But it never made much difference. Perhaps she lost a few pounds, but it was not long before she gave up and became her normal, plump, cheerful self. I’m talking about the 1950s when money was tight and it was not easy to make ends meet. But there was no ‘authority’ forcing people to slim down by using tricks with the food supply. And make no mistake – there were lots and lots of plump women around in those days. Men tended to be slimmer due to the fact that many worked manually, but there were still plenty plump school teachers and doctors. Even then, the phrase ‘middle age spread’ was known and used. Why should not middle age spread be a real phenomenon? Most people who play strenuous games like football ‘hang up their boots’ by the time they reach 40. Their bodies can no longer take the stress. They opt for golf, bowls, snooker, or whatever. It is natural for the human body to start to accumulate fat in middle age to prepare for old age.

I have been vaguely wondering why MPs nod with approval when some vastly expensive, on-going body like PHE is proposed. Can they not see that it will grow and grow until it suffers from middle age spread then obesity?

Wind them down. De-fund them. Give them limited and specific objectives. They deliberately attack and persecute ordinary citizens.

It must come to an end.

A List of Tobacco Control Villains

I wish that I had the time and knowledge to create such a list. I would not include people who genuinely believe that smoking causes LC or any other disease, provided that they confined themselves to scientific facts and advice. But when they stray into the use of force, then they go on the list. By the word ‘force’, I mean stigmatisation, denial of medical treatment, denial of jobs, deliberate taxation, aggressive actions, etc.

It is in the context of ‘aggressive actions’ that we must place Blair et al’s smoking ban. A simple compromise was always possible – a separate, ventilated smoking room. And such a room would not require a hurricane-force fan to remove the smoke. An ordinary extractor fan would do the job, provided that it was situated in the right place. The right place is as near the ceiling as possible and as far away from the room door(s) as possible. Blair et al chose the most aggressive action, which has caused no end of trouble, especially since it created an atmosphere in academia that there was good money to be made from research activism.

A list of such people would be fun. I do not mean that the people on the list should be attacked in any way. But they could be tracked. EG, someone like Silly Sally Davis, and how she moved seamlessly from cocking up the Chief Medical Officer’s job to becoming provost of Oxford Uni. At every point, some group of unknowns must have selected her. There was a time when the Tory Party was like that. The leader ’emerged’, ie, was chosen by the elite in the Tory Party. What is the difference between that system and the appointments of Silly Sally?

It would take a lot of work to unmask the members of Elite Committees. Almost certainly, the same people would appear again and again. So there would be every reason to include on the list people who appear on committees of all sorts in all sorts of disciplines, and then walk away after the decision has been made.

In industry, that might be OK, but not in Government. In industry, outcomes can be measured reasonably precisely merely by counting sales and profits, but there are no such measures in Gov.

So who are the greatest villains?

Brexit Bribery

How very convenient! A £6 billion plan has been proposed to improve areas in which people voted for Brexit. Those who have done the sums reckon that £6 billion is chicken feed. But will the impression of a sizeable fund fool the people of those areas? There again, the purpose of the bribe might be to influence MPs from those areas. Pick off a few at a time here and there. Give them a reason to support May’s deal. They can always claim that their opposition brought about the ‘massive’ injection of funds into their area. No doubt they will be in control of what the money is spent on – their own vote-winning pet projects. Waverers are they target and will be individually selected. It does not matter if they are Labour.

Of course, the scandalous nature of this open bribery will pass right over the heads of the vast majority of MPs. They are used to it.

Has anyone noticed that Theresa May has no ‘fire in her belly’ at all? Ever since she became PM, uttered countless soundbites, none of which have any substance. “Brexit means Brexit” – what else could it mean?  Where people slip up is to interpret that phrase to mean ‘and it is going to happen’. It means nothing of the sort.

“Doing the best for the UK” is another. What is ‘the best’? Is it some botched arrangement where we leave the EU in a few areas, but not altogether?

I don’t understand what the Tories have been doing for the last three years. They could have removed May shortly after the last GE when she lost their, admittedly slim, overall majority.

The UK has been a thorn in the side of the EU ever since we joined. It would not surprise me one bit if they want to see the back of us. That would be a reasonable explanation for their intransigence. It would take only one EU State to block an extension of Art 50. In which case the UK would leave on 29th March 2019 with no deal, or totally cancel Brexit.

Despite the widespread belief that the EU is desperate for our £39 billion contribution, I have my doubts. Quite a lot of that money comes back in the form of multi-million pound grants for EU projects in the UK. And don’t forget that the EU has control of the EU Central Bank. ‘Quantitative Easing’ is not a problem. What QE means in practice is that you will still get the same wage, but it will not buy as much. Most people will not really notice the gradual effect. For example, the newspaper that I buy weekly went up by 5p recently and my pint in the pub also went up by 10p recently. God only knows how many price increases have occurred in the last year or so.

It is people on the fringe who are most affected. They are not the people who May described as ‘just about managing’. Such people are not ‘managing’ at all. They are almost dead.

And, of course, they have had to put up with the beatings of TobCON. The tax persecution and the bans. Since Blair, our own elected representatives have persecuted smokers with rigour, and it does not matter what political party. They all act the same.

I dare say that other bribes are quietly being employed across the Tory Party. They may succeed, but there will be massive anger across the nation if the Will of the People is watered down to vague hopes.

Generalisations

For some reason that is not understood, Cameron et al decided that ‘plain packaging’ would reduce smoking prevalence, especially among the youth. Most readers will know that the evidence was that youth thought that colourful packaging was prettier than dull colours. I suppose that an equivalent would be that films is technicolor are prettier that black and white films. I suppose that the Gov could pass a law which dictates that any TV programme which shows a politician must be in black and white so that viewers would be put off watching such a programme. It might just work!

I remember seeing footage of WW1 action where soldiers went ‘over the top’. I was very young. I actually believed that the battlefield was grey. I took years for me to realise that the fields  were green; that the trees were green; that there were birds twittering in the trees; that there would be quietness over the land a 5 am in the morning, perhaps a mist as the sun rose. Imagine the mental state of the soldiers, knowing that the air would be filled the noise of machine guns and bullets by the thousand in a few minutes time.

It is hard to believe that civilised nations could behave in that way.

It was all based upon generalisations. Did any German hate any Frenchman sufficiently to want to kill him, and vice versa?

The modern equivalent is Brexit. People who voted, for whatever reason, to disengage from the Project of a United States of Europe did not hate Frenchmen or Germans. ‘Project Fear’ has tried to foster such hatred. If Brexit happens, the German and French people will hate Brits sufficiently to create a trade and services war. French and German people will deliberately make air traffic difficult and block medicines.

It is all lazy, generalised, imperialistic thinking. What I have seen and heard so far from reported ‘negotiations’ is that politicians want everything under the sun to be decided in one overall agreement. That is typical politics. Politicians want a grand, overall Treaty which covers everything in one go.

They cannot think otherwise because that is the way that they think of the UK. There needs to be a ‘general’ law which applies to all 40,000,000 million of voters. How can 650 MPs out of 40,000,000 people think in any other way? They cannot.

And that was how the smoking ban came about. What was the key thought? It was the idea of ‘public place’. Once MPs accepted the idea that a pub is ‘a public place’, then the smoking ban became inevitable. The idea that a pub is ‘a public place’ is a vast generalisation. Private clubs also became ‘public places’, regardless of whether the ‘members’ as a group owned the premises and could exclude non-members. Your home also becomes a ‘public place’ if a workman enters it.

Brexit is a mess because politicians, on all sides, did not see that there is no easy solution to decades of treaties. ALL are abrogated. There is no such thing as ‘legally binding’. Our sovereign parliament can ‘unbind’ us any time it decides.

Many bloggers have asked, again and again, why the UK should not unilaterally declare that there will be no hard boarder between South Ireland and the North. It is then up to the EU and South Ireland to impose such a hard boarder. The South Irish do not want it, so it would be up to the EU to impose it. You and whose army?

Words, words, words.

And yet, I believe that, had the negotiations been conducted over the last three years in good faith, there would not now be a cliff hanger.

Massive Secrecy

PM May: “I take it that this room has been thoroughly scrubbed for espionage devices”

Junker: “It has indeed. We have our personal recorders and I am sure that you have. Let us put them on the table. To be certain that there are no other devices, it is in both our interests that our guards, yours and ours, frisk each of us”.

PM May: “Agreed”.

PM May: “Now then, Mr Junker, you know that there is only one stumbling block in the ‘Leave Agreement’ which matters. It is the Irish backstop. We have carefully built it up to such a level that there will be immense relief if a time limit is placed upon it – say, five years. In return, we shall agree to pay the £39 billion per an for those five years. What do you say?”

Junker: “It is not possible…. Unless a certain phraseology is used, and it must be done quickly. The phraseology must be not perfectly clear in French, German, etc, but appear to be perfectly certain in English. We have already worked out such a statement. It must not be issued publicly until the last possible moment. But how sure are you that the £39 billion will be voted through?”

PM May: “It is only the number ’39’ with lots of zeros after it. MPs are used to comparing ’39’ with ‘359’ and and reckoning that 39 is only about 10% of 359. Most MPs do not do maths. In any case, it is only taxpayers’ money. What does it matter? A few will whinge, but most will not give damn. Most of them demand that billions be spent in their areas and constituencies.  It is normal to think in billions. It is very unlikely that payments will derail the passage of the Bill. Further, the payments will be made only for the five years. Who know what will happen in that time?”

Junker: “Here is a copy marked ‘Top Secret’ of the phraseology. You need to get it assessed by your own trusted people. I trust that you can arrange things so that copies are available only for discussion and are destroyed forthwith thereafter. Participants must be made aware of the ‘Dr Kelly Syndrome’ as well as the phrase ‘death by a thousand cuts’. The objective is to ensure that the phraseology is open to interpretation in different languages”

PM May: “Our security services are second to none. We know everything there is to know about every single MP, and their wives and girlfriends. Nothing escapes us. it is rare that such knowledge needs to be brought to bear, but Brexit is the biggest thing for centuries. The UK will leave the EU, as demanded by The People, but gradual integration will continue”

Junker: “I’ll communicate with the others and see what they say. In the meantime, study the phraseology. I see no reason that an accommodation should not be secured. You need to be able to enter the House of Commons waving a piece of paper and calling out, “Peace in our time!”

Do Politicians Have a Conscience?

There are reports today of another Labour MP who has left the party. But he has not joined ‘The Independent Group’. He claims to want to see Brexit happen and does not want to ‘betray’ his constituents. He claims to have fought against racism all his life and has resigned because of the antisemitism in the party. I cannot find the actual report now and can’t be bothered anyway.

I dare say that politicians, at a personal level, have some sort of conscience, but they seem to abandon it when it comes to party solidarity. How come the rebels suddenly discovered antisemitism when Corbyn’s ‘talks’ with the Palestinians have been known about for years? I don’t blame Corbyn for ‘talking’. There is nothing wrong with trying to understand grievances. It may be true that the Israelis drove Arabs from their land at the point of a gun. If so, then the Israelis did wrong. But it was not as simple as that. They were given a territory to call ‘home’ by the UN (?), but they had to fight to retain it. But no need to go into the complexities. Enough to say that being anti-Israel is not the same as being anti-Jew.

It strikes me that the antisemitism is another case of ‘straw man’ – it is an excuse.

But what really annoys me is how the likes of Cameron behave. As PM, he promised to implement the result of the referendum but resigned as soon as the result was known. His action was thoroughly dishonourable. The fact that the Tories then elected another remainer as PM to implement Brexit was possibly even more dishonourable.

And what will happen? As soon as a botched Brexit is voted through, May will be off – just like Cameron. But what will happen to the people who engineered the botch? Nothing. No one even knows who they are.

What we need to know, after a General Election, is not only who the PM appoints be Ministers, but also who the Ministers appoint to be ‘Chief Executives’ of their departments. It is THEY who make the decisions. Ministers do what they are told and then walk away eventually.

It is a lousy political system. That has certainly been shown by the dominance of “Public Health”. It would certainly be better if the CEO of “Public Health, England” was the person who appeared on TV to explain how raising the living costs of slim people would force fatties to stop eating doughnuts.

Why should those people who make the decisions be protected?

The Gathering Storm

Over the last couple of decades, it has become clear that the UK is becoming ungovernable. But it is not the fault of The People. The People have done nothing wrong. A short piece written by Simon Cooke epitomises what we are talking about:

https://theviewfromcullingworth.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-lga-gets-in-hubble-bubble-over.html

The Local Government Association is in a funk about shisha bars:
‘Smoke-free laws are not offering strong enough punishments to deter irresponsible shisha bar owners who are making lucrative profits, which means councils often need to carry out costly and lengthy investigations to take action against the same bar over and over again.’

I’m not sure what the problem is with Shisha Bars. It did not take long for TobCON in Local Authorities organise raids, accompanied by massive police back-up, on pubs which were suspected of allowing smoking after time when the doors had been locked. Why the difficulties with Shisha?

I don’t know for sure, but it seems that Shisha is not by any manner of means always tobacco. Herbs of various kinds are often used. I suppose that you could call them old-fashioned ecigs, with or without nicotine.

So an organisation which does not make national laws is doing its best to persuade National Gov to make it easier to criminalise People who are doing nothing wrong. Note especially in the above quote how ‘making profits’ is equated with criminality.

What is important about Simon Cooke’s piece is that the escalation of law-breaking as regards anything to do with inhaling anything, is all a result of the smoking ban.

And I still do not understand how the Blair Gov got away with it. How can you make a third party responsible for the illegal action of a first or second party? It can only be complicity. What happened was that ‘not interfering’ became ‘complicity’. Thus, if you saw a gang attacking an old man, you must interfere, regardless of the danger to yourself. That is exactly what happened to publicans.

But that idea is rebounding big-time on politicians. They can say what they want, but the fact is that they are all complicit. They all have personal axes to grind. They are dishonest.

Only one thing is certain. The People, in 2016, voted to leave the EU. The Gov had no alternative but to invoke Art 50. Failure to arrive at a deal is the fault of politicians in the UK and the EU. That failure has nothing to do with Brexit. That idea is important. The buggering about for the last three years by politicians has NOTHING to do with the decision of The People.

But ‘the gathering storm’ is deeper than just Brexit etc. It is about reorganising the State Machine. The biggest drag on the EU is its massively top heavy administration. Nobody know what the person next to them is doing, other than crosswords. The same applies to the UK.

The dam has to burst.