A Stick With Which To Beat Us All

The latest buzzword in Public Health and government circles these days is "Health Inequalities." It's sounds authoritative and catchy, I must agree. Brandished by interfering nannying tyrants the world over, it is the fashionable, socialist stick with which to beat us all into submission. There's probably an official definition somewhere, yet put in the simplest possible terms it means "certain people die before other certain people and the government must do something about that because it's not fair!" Here's a helpful graphic:

So where do you fit into this Health Inequalities thing? Fortunately for women and men who live in England, Public Health England has created this interactive portal, called Longer Lives, to help you understand this. It has a Google-powered map and everything. Feel free to take a few moments and interact with the "Early Death" map (as the NHS calls it). It's fun. For even more fun, see: "The Atlas of Risk."

With few exceptions, what you find is that those who live in socio-economic deprived regions of England are most likely to die before reaching the age of 75. (Note: In case you were wondering, Public Health England and our governments have relatively recently determined that any death before the age of 75-years-old is "premature." I'll cover that shortly.)  In other words, the "certain people who die before other certain people" are the poorer folks in England.

Before one gets too carried away by this startling revelation, it's worth pointing out here the wealthiest people always have, on average, outlived the plebs. There are dozens of reasons why this is so -- I suspect you don't need me to explain them all. Suffice it to say that the wealthiest have always enjoyed better diets with much higher-quality foods, better and typically safer working conditions, better sanitation and living conditions, better educational opportunities, and most important better access to the best possible healthcare and treatments than poorer folk.

So when one speaks of Health Inequalities, one is saying that it's not fair that wealthy people get a better deal and will live longer than others, and because of that, the government needs to step in and do something. That's pretty much the concept of Health Inequalities.

There is only way I can think of to achieve near-total health equality:  force everybody to live equal lives. Nobody can have more than anybody else. We all must eat the same foods and do the same exercises. We all must receive the same level of healthcare. All people must live their life according to the scriptures of Public Health. No drinking. No smoking. No risks nor anything that may cause an inequality. There are no differences between any of us. In other words, it's socialism. Through and through, it's a socialist concept.

Nevertheless, nobody believes that a near-total health equality is possible. But they -- they being Public Health -- do believe that significant reductions in Health Inequalities can be made if we all do exactly as they tell us. So they will prioritise and target the smokers, the drinkers, and the overweight, which they've been doing for years now. But to be most effective, Public Health must deliberately target the poorest in society -- those in the socio-economic deprived regions particularly -- and with the stick of "Health Inequalities" and a goal of nobody dying before 75-years-old, Public Health can then request government to force the poorest to conform to the gospel of clean, healthy living.

I suppose, cynically (and perhaps a bit unfairly?), that the goal is to ensure the poorest amongst us can live just that little bit longer, in order to work a few years more so our governments can squeeze out as much tax as they possibly can from them, with the added bonus that downtrodden poor can have a little more time to better appreciate just how wonderful their lives have been, right up until their death at age 75.

Maybe. I could be wrong. I suppose we'll see what happens over the next few years as more and more people like Rebecca Taylor MEP continue screeching about Health Inequalities and that "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!" One thing that is certainly missing from the data that is used to determine these regional Health Inequalities is what people's careers were and the working hazards they faced. Because the type of work you do must also factor in a person's longevity. If your career has you in a semi-enclosed space breathing in automotive exhaust or other particulate matter all day long for many decades, you may not live as long as the person who sat in a clean, air-conditioned office for most of his career and only ventured outside for the occasional Venti latte at Starbucks.

So, while I'm very concerned how Public Health and others will implement reductions in Health Inequalities across England and everywhere else in the world, what is almost of equal concern to me is defining "premature death" as any death before the age of 75.  Oh, how I would have loved to be a fly-on-the-wall when the figure was plucked from the statistical ether and decided upon. Why 75-years-old? I couldn't say. But whatever the reason, it's rubbish. I mean, really, dying at 74 is premature, but 75 is perfectly acceptable? If one dies the day or two before you turn 75, is that counted as premature?

This is the trouble with the idea of premature death and putting an actual figure on it. This basically means that once you turn 75 there is no longer any point in keeping you alive any longer, certainly from a statistical Public Health or government point of view. Someday, in some truly dystopian version of Britain, I imagine it may actually come down to the increasingly cash-strapped NHS refusing certain treatments to anybody over the age of 75. All because you lucky, lucky souls made it past the government-sanctioned age of what constitutes a premature death. I really cannot see this as a good thing for society to pin down "premature death" so precisely. Eh, but who cares what I think? Right?

So, 75 it is, then. This was the average life expectancy for all Britons in 1987. And by 2011, your life expectancy had increased by 5.75 years to 80.75 years-old. Why hold back now? Let's raise the bar for premature death to 80-years-old. That will really help the tobacco control industry's figures of people dying "prematurely from smoking," if you know what I mean. Won't it?

Let's have a look at some life expectancy comparisons throughout the rest of world:

Click to enlargify
Source (please do click this link and select other criteria!): Google

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? At what age is a "premature death" (as defined by this Health Inequalities movement) in the Democratic Republic of Congo if one's life expectancy is only on average 48.37 years?

Actually, what I'm thinking is this: "Why aren't more people in the Public Health racket (along with the compassionate and caring people in tobacco control industry) rushing over to Congo to do something truly worthwhile and try to improve living conditions and healthcare there. Why is Public Health nitpicking on us about what we eat, drink and smoke when they could -- if they truly cared about people's health and saving lives -- go en masse to Congo and attempt make a real, positive difference."

Because they don't want to, is the answer. They're happy right where they are at, ignoring the real horrors people face somewhere else in the world, whilst eating organic rice cakes in their air-conditioned offices, and typing away on their Apple iPads and smartphones, gleefully lording over others and inventing new ways to torture all of us here in England with their petty and hateful demands that we conform to their lifestyle choices, all the while hysterically shrieking "SOMETHING MUST BE DONE! FOR THE CHILDREN!"

What we know for certain is that that the "prohibitionists" of Public Health are only interested in ... control. It's not about health. Anybody's health. Anywhere. Our health, certainly compared to some countries in Africa, is just fine.

I mean, a bit of perspective if you please. In England, a premature death is anything before 75-years-old, whereas in Congo a person's life expectancy isn't even at 50-years-old. Note: the world's average life expectancy is 69.91-years-old as of 2011, two decades more than Congo. The Health Inequalities stick we're going to be beat with doesn't seem to matter all that much in Congo ... does it?

Perhaps the next time the likes of NHS General Practitioner Dr Sarah Jarvis moans about the hoards of people prematurely killing themselves with tobacco and alcohol in England, or complaining about whatever preventable disease she's faced with every day in her office in Shepherd's Bush, London -- in between writing articles and appearing on various news broadcasts saying "I don't care..." -- we can kindly suggest to her to spend at least a year in the Democratic Republic of Congo and get back to us on that whole preventable death thing she's always on about. I'll even stump for the airfare and a month's supply of organic rice cakes, jar or two of Marmite for her, and a dozen boxes of Twinnings Lady Grey tea. One thing is for certain, people in Congo don't care about counterfeit tobacco either. At least Dr Sarah Jarvis will be in good company.

Dr Sarah Jarvis
She "don't care..."

Somewhere in Congo, that counterfeit mud is a huge problem

UK Government Postpones Plain Packaging

Public Health activists, the tobacco control industry and smoker-hating charities like Cancer Research UK are weeping into their pints of non-alcoholic beer today.  The British press is reporting that plain packaging plans are shelved in favour of seeing how the anti-smoker denormalisation experiment in Australia gets on. Twitter is alight with "OMG!!! The government is killing babies!"

The Independent's Oliver Duggan writes:

The Government is to delay plans to introduce standardised cigarette packaging in the UK, sparking outrage from health campaigners.

The policy, which was expected to mirror a similar Australian measure, has been under consideration at the Department of Health for more than a year. A successful consultation process in August 2012 saw the measure enjoy vocal support across Parliament. 

I suppose Duggan defines 'successful' as "rigging a consultation to produce the desired result but getting your asses handed to you anyway."  Because the Department of Health never expected to get over 500,000 responses in opposition to plain packs. Note that the plain packaging consultation still has not been published , was just published* which is unprecedented. It's been almost a year since it closed. It makes you wonder what the tobacco control industry's pet stooge in the Department of Health, Andrew Black, is hiding.  Duggan also writes "vocal support across Parliament" but fails to mention that a great number of MPs were opposed and signed an open letter rejecting plain packaging.  That's how tobacco control industry propaganda rolls. We're used to it.

*(The consultation responses were just published right as I finished this blog post and posted it -- correcting for that here. Here's a link: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/standardised-packaging-of-tobacco-products)

Naturally, anti-smoker charity Cancer Research UK invokes the children, as the BBC reports:

Cancer Research UK chief executive Dr Harpal Kumar said the decision would cost lives.

He said 200,000 children were "lured" into starting smoking in the UK every year.

"The government had a choice: protect children from an addiction that kills 100,000 people in the UK every year or protect tobacco industry profits," he added.

To give activist doctor Kumar's statement some proper balance and perspective in respect of children being "lured" by packaging, I suggest reading this Daily Mash article titled "Cigarette packets 'more addictive than nicotine'":

Professor Henry Brubaker, of the Institute for Studies, said: “The only reason young people buy cigarettes is because of the insanely fancy colours and hypnotic shapes.

“Most of them just throw the cigarettes away.” 

Quite so. 

And you can always tell when the tobacco control industry has failed magnificently when, sensing that their evil plans are losing momentum, The Root of All Evil, whose inside source at the Department of Health lied to him last March, takes to Twitter with hilarity like this:

The Root of All Evil

Because these morons in tobacco control all want you to believe that packaging kills.  Do feel free to watch Chapman's Twitter feed for more comedy, or you can use the Twitter widget in the right sidebar to view his crazy antics on social media.

So the UK will get a few years reprieve from the tobacco control industry's evil plan to eradicate packaging in the name of the children whilst the government looks to Australia to see how well it goes there. 

You should expect endless dodgy studies with made-up evidence, and an equal amount of hateful commentary from those who hate smokers and the tobacco industry, that their evil programme in Australia is working. It won't be remotely true, but that's how the tobacco control industry works. 

Because nothing the tobacco control industry has done has ever worked. Which makes you wonder why, for all of tobacco control's superlative failures, our governments continue to throw money at them hand over fist. The government would get better odds and a better return on its investment in tobacco control by gambling it all in Las Vegas on the roulette wheel. I wouldn't recommend betting on Black, though.

Oh! The Inhumanity in Bolton!

With apologies, I'm a week or so late on covering this -- I am still playing catch-up with all that's happened since I went on holiday.

About a month and some change ago, the Royal Bolton Hospital (Bolton NHS Foundation Trust) asked the Bolton News to run a poll on its website asking whether smoking shelters should be rebuilt on site at the hospital. I wrote about that here.  The Bolton News unequivocally stated that "Trust bosses have promised they will abide by the result of the vote."

When the on-line poll was over, a small majority of 53% wanted the smoking shelters to rebuilt -- 1,522 people for and 1,327 against -- this doesn't include the postal ballots received. The total tally was 1,629 for rebuilding the shelters, and 1,580 truly hateful people against building them. It was a close vote, certainly. But a promise is a promise. Right?

So what are NHS Trust promises worth?  Absolutely nothing, the Bolton News reports:

HOSPITAL bosses have made a dramatic U-turn — and will NOT build smoking shelters at the Royal Bolton.

And why has the Bolton NHS Foundation Trust broken its promise to the good people of Bolton?  Because they hate you, smokers. They despise you. Oh, they'll never say that much, none of them will ever admit how much they despise you, so instead they'll say something about being obligated to protect you from yourselves. But really, for the Trust, it's all about standing "shoulder to shoulder" with evil. For instance, the article in the Bolton News said this:

It comes following weeks of pressure from council chiefs and outraged people over the hospital’s decision to reinstate the shelters following a public vote.

Dr Bene said the reverse decision was made in order for the trust to “stand shoulder to shoulder” with public health — despite 1,629 people voting in favour of the shelters in a poll held last month.

[...]

“We have just undertaken the exercise but having reflected on that and heard a lot of views, we feel perhaps we need to look at this in a different way and stand shoulder to shoulder with our public health colleagues.”

In other words, the Public Health crusaders demanded (perhaps even threatened, although there is no evidence of that) that the Trust break its promise to the fine, upstanding citizens of Bolton. And the Bolton NHS Foundation Trust capitulated to the demands of Public Health. Because in Bolton, it is plainly evident that smokers don't deserve to be treated like human beings, and that if you make a promise to smokers, you don't have to keep that promise, because smokers aren't worth your time or attention.  In Bolton, smokers do not matter, all thanks to the Bolton NHS Foundation Trust's comrades in Public Health. Welcome, Bolton, to the New Inquisition.

If you live in Bolton, you might be tempted to contact your councillors. This would be an error, because your councillors hate you, too, smokers.  The Bolton News article said (emphases added):

The decision [to not build the shelters] has been welcomed by Town Hall bosses.

Cllr Sufrana Bashir-Ismail, cabinet member for public health said: “We are grateful they have listened to concerns raised.

“As a council with responsibilities for promoting healthier lifestyles we were concerned the decision would send out the wrong message and felt the hospital could instead offer advice and support on stopping smoking."

Sufrana Bashir-Ismail (centre)
Source: Bolton News
She's not going to listen to you, smokers.

Well, councillor Sufrana Bashir-Ismail supports Public Health. She is no friend of any smoker in Bolton, that's for certain, and she cannot be trusted to support the will of the public, evidently.

Another Bolton councillor regrets that we live in a representative democracy, possibly. Meet "Conservative" Cllr Andy Morgan, who is disappointed that the public was asked to vote on the smoking shelters (emphases added):

Cllr Andy Morgan, who sits on Bolton Council's health scrutiny, said the shelters should never have gone to a public vote.

[...]

“We have all got a part to play in public health and the hospital is no different. This has been a complete and utter waste of every body’s time and resources."

Bolton Councillor Andy Morgan
Source: Twitter 
"We have all got a part to play in public health..." Andy says.
Jay says, Well, don't let 'em see that beer, Andy. I'm confident that's over the Public Health nutters' recommended daily limit.

Thanks, Andy, for looking out for Bolton's citizens. They're all so very lucky to have you. Your Italian holiday pics look fab, by the way.

Clearly, in Bolton, your councillors do not work for you, instead they choose to work for Public Health or perhaps for their own personal gain -- some, like Andy Morgan, don't even want to let you vote on issues that matter to you, or maybe that's just the issues that matters to smokers. Is there any real difference? I suppose public opinion is irrelevant in Bolton, thanks to the insidious nature of Public Health's denormalisation programme against smokers, and thanks to town hall bosses who support anti-smokers.

Well, I feel bad for Bolton's smokers, who don't deserve compassion, who don't deserve to be treated like human beings by those you voted for, or by those who are supposed to treat you when you are ill.  You cannot trust your doctors, and you cannot trust your councillors, and you must never trust anybody who works for or supports Public Health. They all despise you and want you to shiver in the cold, wet weather, unsheltered from the elements.

There is no humanity left in Bolton. Evidently.

Is Dr Margaret Chan The Most Dangerous Woman in the World?

Repeat after Public Heath:

There is no slippery slope.

There is no slippery slope.

There is no slippery slope.

Stop.

Most certainly there is a slippery slope, and now it's a veritable avalanche of New Inquisition hatred against capitalism and consumers, all designed to force you to live your life precisely in the manner that Public Health deems fit.

In the last 30 or 40 years, Public Health has transmogrified from a group of compassionate scientists and doctors, who strove to eradicate communicable diseases all over the world, into what I call The New Inquisition, which is a self-serving socio-political / activist taxpayer-funded industry staffed with socialists (i.e. anti-capitalists who hate that people make money) and prohibitionists of the worst kind.  Public Health, in its present incarnation, is the greatest threat to freedom and civilisation the world has seen since National Socialism ran roughshod over continental Europe in the 1930s.

You don't have to take my word for it, though. You can read the following excerpted incantations of the High Priestess of Public Health, one of the Grand Inquisitors of the New Inquisition, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, Dr Margaret Chan, which she chanted to her faithful minions of hate in Helsinki, Finland, just two days ago (emphases added):

The determinants of health are exceptionally broad. Policies made in other sectors can have a profound, and often adverse, effect on health.

Public health has been on the receiving end of these policies for a very long time. With this meeting, it is time for us to move to the top of the table, and have our say. A great deal is at stake.
[...]

The challenges facing public health have changed enormously since the start of this century. In our closely interconnected world, health everywhere is being shaped by the same powerful forces: demographic ageing, rapid urbanization, and the globalization of unhealthy lifestyles.

Under the pressure of these forces, chronic non-communicable diseases have overtaken infectious diseases as the leading cause of morbidity, disability, and mortality.

As stated in the UN Political Declaration on NCDs, prevention must be the cornerstone of the global response to these costly, deadly, and demanding diseases. Their root causes reside in non-health sectors. Collaboration among multiple sectors is imperative.

The consequences of this shift in the disease burden reach far beyond the health sector to touch economies everywhere. Recent studies demonstrate that the costs of advanced cancer care are unsustainable, even in the richest countries in the world.

[...]

Today, the tables are turned. Instead of diseases vanishing as living conditions improve, socioeconomic progress is actually creating the conditions that favour the rise of noncommunicable diseases. Economic growth, modernization, and urbanization have opened wide the entry point for the spread of unhealthy lifestyles.
The globalization of unhealthy lifestyles is by no means just a technical issue for public health. It is a political issue. It is a trade issue. And it is an issue for foreign affairs.

[...]

In the 1980s, when we talked about multisectoral collaboration for health, we meant working together with friendly sister sectors. Like education, housing, nutrition, and water supply and sanitation. When the health and education sectors collaborate, when health works with water supply and sanitation, conflicts of interest are rarely an issue.

Today, getting people to lead healthy lifestyles and adopt healthy behaviours faces opposition from forces that are not so friendly. Not at all.

Efforts to prevent non-communicable diseases go against the business interests of powerful economic operators. In my view, this is one of the biggest challenges facing health promotion.

[...] it is not just Big Tobacco any more. Public health must also contend with Big Food, Big Soda, and Big Alcohol. All of these industries fear regulation, and protect themselves by using the same tactics.

[...]

Tactics also include gifts, grants, and contributions to worthy causes that cast these industries as respectable corporate citizens in the eyes of politicians and the public. They include arguments that place the responsibility for harm to health on individuals, and portray government actions as interference in personal liberties and free choice.
[...]

As we learned from experience with the tobacco industry, a powerful corporation can sell the public just about anything.
[...]

Not one single country has managed to turn around its obesity epidemic in all age groups. This is not a failure of individual will-power. This is a failure of political will to take on big business.

This is the guidance gospel given to all public health fanatics the world over -- this is their rallying cry.  Let's summarise and rephrase Dr Chan's evil beliefs and intentions for world domination, shall we?

YOU are incapable of free choice and free will. Everything is the fault of capitalism. You have no control over anything you do.  Public Health will save you, but only when Public Health can force governments to let Public Health save you by destroying free markets and individualism, by eradicating responsibility and choice.  Every decision you can ever make is wrong, because you don't know how to make decisions -- only The New Inquisition has the knowledge, the know-how, the drive even, to force you to comply with their demands. You will be immortal, if only you have faith.

And that, if I do say so myself, is an excellent summary of the Slippery Slope / Avalanche of Hellish and Biblical Proportions that is coming to every country in the world, thanks to people like Dr Margaret Chan and those who think just like her.  We are all in imminent danger from Public Health.  We should never have to say those words, but sadly they have never been more true.  Public Health is a menace to society, and it must be stopped.

For more on this, see this video with Christopher Snowdon discussing the "non-existent" slippery slope with the Sun News in Canada.  It's about 14 minutes long and Chris appears about 4 or 5 minutes in...

By the way, you may remember Margaret Chan from my Black Seoul Days post -- she's holding a glass of champagne. So I suppose it's all right for her to drink alcohol, just not the plebs of the world.

High Priestess of Public Health, Dr Margaret Chan

Socialism and a Sneak Preview

In a week's time, my wife and I are going on holiday to the States. We're doing a west coast Route 101 driving holiday -- actually, we're doing a 3500-mile loop starting from San Francisco, to Vegas, up to Salt Lake City, over and up to Seattle, and then down the west coast on Route 101, terminating back at San Francisco. Not nearly as epic as Tom Paine's cross-country US Tour road trip of a lifetime, but for us it'll do nicely.  To be fair, my wife is nearly peeing her pants with excitement.*  I'm pretending to be calm and aloof about the whole thing. Because the handbook for men says you have to be stoic and cool outwardly. Inwardly, you can jump up and down like a schoolgirl who just got her first pony.

(*This is my wife's dream trip -- something she has wanted to do since her early twenties. Twenty years later, with a few modifications to the itinerary at my request (Vegas, for instance), she's doing it. She has graciously allowed me to join her.)

So we're going away for two-and-half weeks, returning back to ol' Blighty in the first week of July. Instead of not blogging during that period, I will schedule some special blog posts for pretty much every day that I'm away. And I want to give you a sneak preview of what is to come. 

First, some background.  Last weekend, when visiting some friends in a nearby town, we stopped in small shop selling antiques and other items.  I went merely eight steps past the threshold and saw a stack of old magazines from the 40s and 50s practically hidden in a cubby-hole at foot level. Idly, whilst my wife nosed about the shop with her friend, I picked up a magazine from the top of the pile and gently thumbed through it.

A curious thing happened. I suddenly wanted these magazines. I'm not a collector of anything. I mean, sure, I've got stuff that I've bought over the years -- primarily musical equipment that I'm simply unable to part with. But old magazines? Collecting things like these never would have occurred to me. Until I began to read them.

And they are awesome. They are, for me, enormously valuable insights to a time well before my years and experiences. I was born in 1971. My knowledge of the 40s and 50s is, at best, limited to old films and music from that time. Sure, I know my history, I know what happened during those years, generally speaking. But as I picked up another magazine, I realised that these magazines were glimpses of a time in Britain when people were not trying to control every aspect of your life. Just the opposite, actually. It was a time for freedom, a time to fight against tyranny and a time to be proud to British. Not only British, but proud to be any of the western nations who believed in freedom and liberty.

All at once I realised that I was both overjoyed and incredibly sad.  So much has changed in such a short period of time.  The freedoms and liberties our families had fought for, won, and enjoyed back then have slipped away because Britain and America have slowly become more socialist and controlling countries -- not that far removed from Germany in the 30s and 40s in my opinion.  Although it is more subtle now than it was then, and it's more gradual, socialism exists in spades in our academic and political institutions. And I cannot help but think:

People never learn from history

I'm not going to write that we are doomed to repeat history. We may be; we may not be.  But the truth is we simply fail to remember history and use it as guidance for the present and future. Probably because we don't know the past personally, or don't remember what it was like since time has a funny way of distorting our memories. Maybe that's how we're designed. I don't know. And I'm not saying that we should all go back to a time when things were "quaint" and "simple." Not at all. What I'm saying is that we need to remember that socialism is and always has been evil -- because it's solely about control. It's about forcing everyone to conform to an impossible ideal; to make everybody behave and think the same. This is entirely against human nature, regardless of how much some people believe it is not. We are all individuals, with different experiences and dreams and hopes and beliefs.  The only way to make everybody the same is to crush those dreams and hopes and beliefs, to transform you into a "citizen" -- an automaton incapable of free thought.  That ... is socialism.  

And all of the public health movement is unabashedly socialist. All of them. They believe they have the right to force you to conform to their beliefs -- even when they don't live by their own beliefs, they still feel that you should do precisely what you're told to do.  Typical hypocrisy for people of that ilk.

But you should never let anyone force you to do something or change you against your will. You should fight such influences with every last ounce of energy you have.  

Most people -- the vast majority of people -- won't fight, however, until they are backed into a corner so far that it's almost impossible to escape the inevitable loss of freedom and liberty.  Because most people expect others to do the fighting for them. That's also human nature. Why risk yourself when others might put themselves at risk first?  So it seems prudent and easier to sit back and wait. That's a mistake. Because when nobody stands up to fight, then it's too late. Then you find yourself forced to fight an uphill battle, and there's an excellent chance that the things you need to use for the fight were taken away or surrendered long before then.

Public Health and our current mainstream press are both the greatest enemies to freedom and liberty in our modern times. I don't say that lightly. I truly believe this to be true. Dictators can be overthrown eventually, but how do you overthrow an insidious, evil, people-control movement from within our own societies? How do you convince the mainstream press to stop propagandising on behalf of the socialists? How do you prevent these people -- who truly believe that they are justified in taking away anything you hold dear in order to save you from yourself -- from infecting our youth with their brand of hateful, socialist ideas?

How indeed?

You tell me. How much longer are we going to tolerate it? When it gets so bad that there is nothing at all left for us to lose? Or will we wake up and remember what happened with the socialist movement 80-something years ago, how it came to be, and why people chose not to act until things had already got out of control? Do we really want to repeat history all over again?

So I want to give you a sneak preview of what's coming whilst I'm away on holiday. I'll start with this:

WHAT WE ARE FIGHTING FOR
Picture Post, 13 July 1940
Click image to enlargify

You can probably see where this will be going.

Remember:  It should always be "Freedom To Do Something" -- never "Freedom From Something."  Socialism falls under the latter category -- and most if not all of you know that the term Nazi is short for National Socialist (or in full: National Socialist German Workers' party).  We all know how well that worked out. Don't we? We don't need socialism -- we don't want socialism. It will cause unnecessary divisions in our societies and already has done so; socialism will cause wars; it will destroy civilisation; it will be the end of freedom, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Public health and our press are attempting this right now by slow degrees of control and propaganda. We have to find a way to stop this socialist movement before it goes too far. Before it's too late to stop it.

[A much higher resolution of the above image can be retrieved here.]

Is There Any Humanity In Bolton?

By now you're probably already aware that the Royal Bolton Hospital is considering whether to reinstall its smoker shelters, which were removed in 2009.

Simon Clark covers it here.

And the Bolton Smokers Club covers it in numerous posts  here, here, here and here. (I think I got all of 'em.)

I don't like blogging about stuff others have already covered, but I'm going to now because I think I have something to add to this discussion.

So here's the thing.  We treat animals better than we do smokers.  Free-range pigs have shelters from the elements. So why can't people have shelters as well?  I mean, are smokers so despised by the health nazi elite that we don't deserve to be sheltered when we are forced to step outside to smoke a cigarette?  I'm guessing that must be the case.

Actually, I'm not guessing. I know it to be true.  Here's a private Facebook conversation that a good friend sent to me in respect of how smokers are somehow a burden to the NHS.  This is a small excerpt from a much longer conversation, but there's nothing taken out of context here. It is what it is:

Click to enlargify

"People are not best placed to know what is best for them because in general, people are stupid. The average person cannot be trusted to have too many freedoms otherwise they abuse them."

Holy fucking wow! Can you believe that shit?  The "average person cannot be trusted."  We're talking average here, which one presumes means the majority of people. We're not even talking about immigrants. No. Average British folk. And you're all stupid according to this person.  Well, well, well... the person who wrote that "people are not best placed to know what is best for them" is definitely a cunt. Curiously, that person is also a UKIP supporter and despises socialism, according to that person's Facebook profile.

What? You thought UKIP supporters were all pro-smoking?  You'd be very wrong if you did. Truth is, anti-smoking crosses all political boundaries and parties. Anti-smoking is not exclusively Labour or Lib Dem, although one must concede that a huge plurality of those twats are certainly more anti-smoking than others. But nope. There are many Tories and UKIPs who also despise smokers.  You cannot trust any party to do right by you.

Folks, the problem with politics isn't the parties. Voting for any of them means voting for the status quo -- being told how to live your life.  Each party has a different view, some have merits, others are insane. But you have to decide to accept that party's stance if and when you vote for somebody.  The problem with politics is that it is by design utterly corrupt.  The people who want to be politicians are those who should never be in charge of anything... ever. And that's true of all parties. All of them.  The only solution to the party problem, which is also fraught with unworkable issues, is to abolish the party system.  Since that's a piss-poor solution in itself, then it's pretty clear that what we need is a "benevolent tyranny."  And someday I will write a post about it. Today, is not that day.  Instead I'm writing about Bolton -- I apologise for the digression.

So, back to Bolton. The question isn't whether the hospital should reinstall smoker shelters. The question is whether anybody in Bolton has any humanity?  Like I said, we treat animals better than we treat other people. The humane thing to do is to put up the shelters.

It's not illegal to smoke anywhere outside on the hospital grounds. They just don't want you to smoke there. They want to make an example of you. So the hospital has a serious enforcement problem. They can only cite people for littering (and seriously people, carry a portable ashtray to avoid the fines and the unsightly litter), but you cannot stop the people from smoking anywhere on the hospital grounds.  Since it's not illegal to smoke outside, then why wouldn't you put up shelters to protect those patients, staff and visitors from the elements?  It's a compassion thing. It's not a legal thing.

Well, there's a poll on the Bolton News website, and the hospital trust has agreed to abide by the results of the poll.  With this in mind, the first thing you ought to do is go vote YES on that poll. Because then the shelters will be built and that's the right thing to do of course.

But there should never have been a need for a poll such as this in the first place. Good people, decent people, humane and caring people would build shelters regardless. They wouldn't have a goddamn poll for fuck's sake! They would do it out of compassion for their fellow human beings. Like Ikea did.  Only evil tobacco control fuckpuppets from the hell that is the New Inquisition would want smokers to suffer in the cold, windy elements.

And that's all I have to say about it.*

(*Actually, I have a lot more to say about it, but I've said enough for now.)

Plain Bottles, Cans and Pint Glasses

One can never be absolutely certain, but it certainly seems that just about every last person working in public health* is a moron.

(*Not including those who work in communicable disease prevention -- which is a noble job that almost nobody gives a shit about until some disease runs rampant.)

How many times have you seen these muppets say "Tobacco is unique. There is no other product like it." to justify any of the thousands of dumb-ass laws that they lobby for on daily basis?  A billion squared?  Evidently, nobody working in the "control" industries within public health is corresponding with another, or even those bizarre pseudo-journalists called "health correspondents" or similar, because ... guess what? They're again calling for plain packaging restrictions for alcohol.

Under the dubious and sensationalised headline of "Irish drinking 700 percent over recommended safe alcohol level at risk of cancers" the Irish Central paper reports (emphases mine):

"[...] Kathleen O’Meara, ICS head of advocacy said, “From a public health perspective, this needs to be managed and controlled, and that marketing tool needs to be taken away from alcohol companies in a similar way that the introduction of plain packaging for cigarettes has deprived tobacco companies of the ability to spread their message.” 

 So, there are a few take-home lessons here.

1.  Tobacco is not unique.

2.  The "Slippery Slope" is a full-on avalanche of prohibitionist hate towards everything and everybody who doesn't want to be immortal.

3.  They be coming for yo' fags, yo' booze and everythin' else, plebs.

4. Journalists are aiding and abetting the prohibitionists at every opportunity. DO NOT TRUST JOURNALISTS -- most of them are simply copying and pasting from press releases, which makes them unreliable sources of news and, well, shitty people for deceiving us with this propaganda every fucking day.

5.  Kathleen O'Meara is probably* a prohibitionist nutjob who also failed the public health tobacco control industry's denormalisation course where you're only allowed to say that tobacco is unique.

Kathleen O'Meara - Prohibitionist? Nutter? On the outs with Tobacco Control fuckpuppets? Who knows.

(*you decide what she is... I mean, I have my opinion ... it's not particularly flattering.)

This is yet another reason why we have fought against plain packs for tobacco, and must continue to fight.  Because if they -- they being the fuckpuppets of public health -- win that war, then it's fair game for everything else. It will happen, if we let it happen. Since none of us have the power to exile people to Australia, where they -- the fuckpuppets -- can live out their meaningless existences safe from the rest of the world, guided by the holy lights of Professor Simon Chapman and that other guy, Mike Daube.

I don't know about you, but I think a plain packaged world will be rather dull. I'd rather be surrounded with dangerous, child-tempting trade marks and logos than to look at whatever sort of "standardised" packaging for bottles, cans, and pint glasses that the likes of Kathleen O'Meara can dream up.  If she dreams -- she could be a malfunctioning robot, since she obviously didn't get the firmware update and subroutines that declare, endlessly, that ...

TOBACCO IS UNIQUE.

From the Cold, Dead Fingers of Young People

Unbeknownst to me, and all of America, it would seem that you are not an adult until you reach the age of 24, in the minds of activist doctors anyway.  Wait. I've got ahead of myself.  Let me start earlier.

There was this bullshit tweet by the Root of All Evil.

OK, let's just focus on the substance of that tweet for a moment.

In 2010, from which this tweet refers to, there were 74.1 million children in America.  That's the population of Britain, mind.

So, based on stats in the link The Root of All Evil tweeted, 99.9953% of kids in America did not and won't get cancer in their childhood, mainly because those most at risk of any kind of cancer are usually older than 60, so that's a bollocks comparison to begin with, but I'm unsurprised that he would cite it.

Infections that people most often die from, including kids, are usually acquired in a hospital, but even so this isn't all that common amongst children, in fact it's incredibly rare. Fewer than 1000 American kids.

And "congential probs" (typically congenital heart defects) are very slightly more common than infections, but are usually treatable if you're aware that you have a defect, and you can expect to live many, many years past childhood, yet there is no guarantee. Many people who die from congenital heart defects were entirely unaware it existed.

So, all three of those comparisons are total bullshit.  You can cherry pick the data all you like and make up any sort of bollocks comparison to anything else, but it means fuck all.  It means you're an arse with a particular axe to grind.  Naturally, anyone and everyone who works in Public Health will twist and distort everything to suit their agenda.  The Root of All Evil is no different.

But Chapman didn't make up the stats, he merely distorted them after they were initially distorted by both Judith S. Palfrey, M.D., and Sean Palfrey, M.D. (hereafter the Palfreys M.D.). And this is where it gets peculiar.  The legal age of adulthood in America is 18.   But the Palfreys M.D., well they've decided to reclassify 18-24 year-olds as children (or young people).  Now, when anyone says "young people," I naturally assume they refer to anyone who is not a legal adult.  So for Americans, anyone 17 or younger would be a "young person," the very legal definition of a "child."  Young adults are not "young persons."  They are adults, who are younger than older adults.  Even now, at 41, my older neighbours consider me to be a "young adult."  In their mind, I am young, even though I'm now middle-aged.  So it's semantics and perception.  But statistics and science demand accuracy and integrity, not personal perspective and clear bias.  So the Palfreys M.D have skewed their data to include up to 24-year-olds to suit their anti-gun agenda.  And the Root of All Evil then called all of them "kids."  They aren't kids. 18-24 year-olds in America are not fucking "kids."  They're legal adults.  Dickhead.

So, here's a graph that the Palfreys M.D. provided with their paper in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Now, you can't tell from the graph unless you read the paper, but they claim there were 6,570 "gun-related" deaths amongst "children and young people" aged 1 -24.  But how many were truly young people, you know, the "legal children?"  

This site claims that:

In the U.S. for 2010, there were 31,513 deaths from firearms, distributed as follows by mode of death: Suicide 19,308; Homicide 11,015; Accident 600.

So, the total gun deaths are 30,923, of which 62.4389% were suicides, 35.6207% were homicides (includes cops killing civilians), and 1.9403% were accidental discharges.  But this doesn't give us a breakdown by age.  There is a clue, however, why the Palfreys M.D. included up to 24-year-olds in their figures, and that comes from this line (emphasis added):

In the US the overall firearm death rate was 10.2 per 100,000, the overall firearm homicide rate 4.1 per 100,000, and the overall homicide rate 6.0 per 100,000, with firearm homicide rates highest persons 15 to 24 years of age.

Ah, so it is the 15-24 year-olds who account for the highest homicide rates, which just so happens to be the age group most likely to be in a gang.  But 18-24 year-olds are not "children."  They are adults.  They shouldn't be added to the statistics and the graph. Naturally, the Palfreys M.D. are playing fast and loose with their data to suit an agenda.

In order to discover how many firearms deaths (for any reason) occurred amongst the under-18s in the US for the year 2010, I had to visit the CDC's fatal injury report generator page, because I couldn't find anything anywhere that listed gun deaths by age.  Here's a breakdown:

There were a total of 1,337* firearms deaths for the under-18s, or 4.3236% of all firearms deaths in America for 2010.

98 (7.3298%) were unintentional.

838 (62.6776%) were homicides.

375 (28.0478) were suicides.

26 (1.9446) are undetermined / unknown.

(*yes, my hacker geek friends, I'm aware that 1337 spells "leet".)

Now I would probably discount the suicide deaths, because anyone who truly wants to commit suicide will find any means available to do it. But let's include them anyway.  Altogether, only 0.0018% (1,337 out of 74.1 million) of legally-defined children in the United States died as a result of firearms.


Compare those figures with the total deaths of all children under 18 in the US, which equals 9,028 (or 0.01218% of 74.1 million).

14.8094% of all the children's deaths are related to guns.

Motor vehicle deaths (all types), however, tally 2,833 (or 31.3801%), more than twice the number of gun-related fatalities.

And are there any paediatricians in America calling for cars to be banned?  Pish. No. Don't be stupid. Cars don't kill kids (particularly those fancy, expensive Jaguars). Only guns do. And smoking. Bugger! I almost forgot about smoking.  There doesn't seem to be a selection on the CDC's site for kids who died "from smoking."  So, I picked Fire/Burn deaths instead, because fires only happen because there are smokers. That was 389 youngsters. 

Anyway, meet the Palfreys M.D., so that if you happen across them on a public street (wherever they live), you can give them the middle finger and call them rude names for being activist doctors with a clear agenda to distort the truth in support of their gun control beliefs.

Jeez. Aren't they Palfreys M.D. cute?  Don't ya just wanna give them a big ol' bear hug?  I know I do.  So do some of their contemporaries.  Have a look at these comments:

To the first commenter, I agree that the NEJM should stick to medical topics (but they won't), and to the second commenter, a lack of research by medical professionals is what we've all come to expect from the medical community, particularly editors of any medical journal. We don't trust doctors, particularly activist doctors and medical journal editors who are just as bad as any politician.

By the way, if you were curious, the 18 to 24-year-olds' gun-related deaths equalled 5,244.  Hmm.  1,337 versus 6,581 (the CDC's total is 11 more than what they counted), and 6,581 is almost five times more than the actual "children and young people's" deaths.  Which figure would you choose if you were in the Public Health / Activist Doctor racket?  You got it! The bigger one!

Just to put a different point onto the end of this blog post here's an interesting tidbit from Just Facts. The Gun Control people like the Palfreys M.D. in America are enormously stingy bastards when it comes to political contributions:

From the 1990 election cycle through August 22, 2010, the following political contributions were made by gun rights and gun control interest groups to federal politicians:

	Total Contributions	Donations to Democrats	Donations to Republicans	Percent to Dems	Percent to Repubs
Gun Rights	$22,467,579	$3,231,405	$19,195,400	14%	85%
Gun Control	$1,888,886	$1,776,310	$112,326	94%	6%

Oh, wait. Sorry. I'm not done yet.  Let's have a brief look at what sort of tweets-in-reply to the Root of All Evil's bullshit tweet were:

Dey be coming for yo fags, yo booze, yo soda pop, and yo guns, motherfuckers!

Drinking Will Make Your Tits Fall Off

Here we are on the first day of January 2013, and the shitbag prohibitionists who invented Dry January have wasted no time at all in getting their propaganda out in the mainstream press to assure you that if you stop drinking (and smoking) then you will live forever. The Telegraph has a gem of an article a propaganda piece called "Alcohol guidelines 'too high' say doctors."   Ah, just from the title we know it's going to be a doozy.

They have been set too high and fail to take into account new evidence showing that drinking only modest amounts raises the risk of cancer and other diseases.
[...]
A Harvard University study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2011, found that women who drank just four small glasses of wine a week - about five units - increased their risk of developing breast cancer by 15 per cent compared to teetotallers. 

OK, for argument's sake, let's say that this risk increase of 15% for women who drink a paltry 5 units per week is an accurate statistic (and let's be honest, I'm pretty sure that this arbitrary five unit limit is reached within a couple of hours on a daily basis, but I digress).  That sounds frightening?   FIFTEEN PERCENT INCREASED RISK!  ZOMG!  Stop drinking now, ladies, or your waps will rot and fall off!  It's the end of the world! Right?

Ahem.

So what does this 15% increased risk of tit cancer mean in real terms?  How concerned should you be, ladies? To get that answer, I visited the web site of CRUK, our favourite evil, prohibitionist, nannying charity.  Here they give the estimated risk figures for women getting breast cancer over the course of their lifetime.  I don't know if it's accurate or adjusted / weighted in any way, but for our purposes it doesn't matter.  We're going to assume that it too is accurate.

To start, here is their table of women's estimated risk for breast cancer:

The first thing we notice is, which CRUK even says on their site, is that your risk increases greatly as you get older.  That's fair, because your risk of getting every kind of cancer increases greatly as you get older.  But anyway, the stats are presented in a way to make it look as scary as possible.  1 in 2000 seems like a pretty high chance and a lot of women are getting breast cancer before 30, doesn't it?  "One in Two-Thousand Women under 30 will DIE from breast cancer!" the papers will claim!

Well, no.  Here's a another way of looking at that figure.  1 in 2000 = 0.05% or five hundredths of a percent (which also looks like this in pure decimal form: 0.0005)  That's rare. In fact, as a statistic, it's considered negligible (although, I readily concede that anyone under 30 who does get breast cancer would argue that it's not that negligible because it happened to them), and your risk is practically non-existent.

So if you have a nearly non-existent risk of 0.05% and you increase that risk by an additional 15% because you're a filthy drinker of alcohol, then what's your new risk of watching your tits fall off before 30?  The answer is still non-existent at 0.0575%.  It didn't even increase a whole hundredth of a percentage point.  The additional risk of 15% is still negligible, statistically-speaking.

Anyway, I've done the maths on the rest of the ages noted in CRUK's table.  Actually, my Excel spreadsheet did them for me, because I'll be honest here, my maths skills are fairly rubbish these days. But I still know how to calculate percentages and write a formula for Excel (maybe), so without further ado:

Looking at the table's Lifetime risk values, the highest actual increase in real terms that any woman who drinks the dirty booze could expect to see is just 1.875%.  And for all women under 60 years of age, your increase in real terms doesn't even reach 1%.  So, ladies, your waps are fine if you keep drinking up to 5 units per week.  (Of course, if you drank 6 units per week, then you'd probably drop dead within a month.)  I should add that even my table of stats must be considered dodgy, too. I just used CRUK's table and calculated from there, and I'm conflating data from different sources, which is a no-no.  It's only meant to be illustrative, not scientific or factual.  Truth be told, what I have just done is par for the course these days in Public Health, so I feel at ease doing so.

Regardless, I hope that clearly illustrates exactly how the media, its flunky-junky medical correspondents, our activist doctor enemies and a host of ill-meaning university departments deceive you on a daily basis in order to promote their prohibitionist agendas. They don't tell you the real truth. They don't tell you what the statistics mean in real terms.  They are in effect lying to you by omission, and that makes them deceitful scumbags from hell. Do not trust any of these people. Ever.

Those puppies gon' be jus' fine! Keep drinking!

PS:  I'm sure you all know about Drinkuary, a wonderful riposte to Dry January. Don't you?  Such a shame this isn't happening next month, then we could have had "Febrewary."  Oh, well.

Updates on Patient X, Premature Deaths, and Steve Taylor

I meant to write this post over a month ago, but so much has been happening that I hadn't much time to get around to it.  So here are few updates on some older posts I wrote this year.

Some of you may remember this blog post I wrote back in April about Patient X, who was being denied treatment by the NHS because X was a smoker.  I certainly have not forgotten about it, and every few weeks I try to get an update about the situation. My source, however, is incredibly reluctant to pass any further information about what is going on, for fear of retaliation against X.  Because of this fear, my source refuses to share the letter that the NHS sent to X, even though I've promised to redact it fully to avoid X being identified. It's frustrating that people are genuinely afraid of our socialised health care system -- no, it's absolutely galling and unacceptable. We should not be afraid of our doctors. Nevertheless, I have since given up trying to persuade my source to part with the letter.  I do, however, have a bit more info to share, so I thought it would be good to provide short update.

A short while back, X received another letter from the NHS.  Instead of demanding again that X quit smoking, that letter was an appointment confirmation to book in the care that X requires.  Patient X had not contacted the NHS for any reason -- not to complain or ask for redress -- and X had all along assumed that in order to go ahead with treatment that X had to quit smoking.  But X had not given up smoking.  So it's possible that the letters the NHS is sending out are simply paper tigers -- unenforceable and deceptive ploys designed to deceive you to quit smoking in order to receive NHS services, even though you do not have to quit to receive treatment.  I cannot say with certainty that is what those letters are, but based on X's experience, it seems that way.  Or maybe somebody just ballsed it up and sent the letter out mistakenly. Whatever the reason for the new letter, the NHS is unnecessarily causing patients grief and anguish to promote it's anti-smoker stance.

While I'm on the subject of the NHS, there is yet another public consultation happening right now to propose amendments the to the NHS's Constitution. It's rather lengthy at 58 pages (the PDF, which you can get here, is only 670kb though).  If you have never read the NHS's Constitution, you might find it well interesting. Skip to Annex 4 in the PDF on page number 38 (actual page is 41).

One of the first things I noticed was this logo (note to Lawson: you know what to do):

Does it? Does it really? Even smokers and chubby folk?

You should know that you have certain rights to health care, and these are enumerated for you in Annex 4. Do read them. You also have a right to be treated with dignity, respect and compassion. At item number 53 in section 2 on Page 16 (actual page 19), it reads (emphasis added):

Dignity, respect and compassion

53. Compassionate care should be at the centre of the care and treatment the NHS provides. The NHS Future Forum considers it a core principle that the NHS needs to continue to uphold in all aspects of service delivery. A culture of compassion, dignity and respect is best achieved when the concerns and interests of individuals are prioritised and their basic human rights are safeguarded. To better reflect this we have strengthened the wording in the values’ section of the Constitution. We have also incorporated dignity, respect and compassion into the aims for staff.

The Constitution itself merely says:

Respect, consent and confidentiality:

You have the right to be treated with dignity and respect, in accordance with your human rights.

Well, that's all well and good, I suppose. Still, we already know that the tobacco control industry's decades of denormalisation have clearly resulted in smokers being despised and vilified, a veritable sub-class of humanity, indeed smokers are less than human and undeserving of any basic human right to respect, compassion or dignity, but certainly deserving of dying a painful death if they choose to abandon the gospel of Public Health.  Well, that's my take on it.  I don't know what the brass in the NHS really thinks about smokers.  All I do know is that doctors are supposed to treat people who are ill, regardless of how one became ill.  And I know that too many doctors today don't want to treat smokers because they believe the illnesses are self-inflicted and preventable. In other words, smokers, you are taking time away from those who actually deserve to be treated for their illnesses -- and yes, I actually heard a GP say something very, very close to that.

Oh, and one last thing. Did you know that the NHS has a mandate?  You can read the NHS mandate here.  The very first part of the mandate is "Preventing people from dying prematurely."  I have long wondered what is to be considered a premature death by the anti-smokers and Public Health believers.  At which point do you draw a line under the age at when someone's death is no longer premature?

I pondered this dilemma in my very first blog post, and I still believe that there is no such thing as a premature death.  There are unexpected deaths, and tragic deaths, and drawn-out painful deaths because we have no rights to determine our times of death when we are terminally ill. But premature? It is merely the time of your death, regardless of time spent on this spinning piece of rock. My opinion aside and if the mandate is anything to go by, then it appears that the NHS has drawn the line under the age of 75. 

How does that make you feel knowing the government-sanctioned life expectancy is 75-years-old.  I suppose I am not surprised by this revelation. Make of it what you will.

* * *

Some things do surprise me.  Take for example the blog post I wrote about criminal scum -- er, I mean, serial fraudster Steve Taylor.  Presently, it is the fourth-most popular post on my blog (it was as high as no.2 at one point), and it's got nothing to do with anti-smokers.  Go figure!

When I wrote about Steve Taylor, it was personal interest story.  The guy just pissed me off.  I didn't expect much to come of that post. At the time of writing, I did not fully realise the effect this man has had on hundreds of people.  But I know it now because I get one or two e-mails per week about the things he has done to others, how he harmed them and ruined people's lives. I cannot publish those e-mails, for they are hearsay and some have even begged that I do not mention their name for fear of retaliation. But I thank all of you who have written to me about Taylor. I am truly sorry that Taylor has had a negative impact on your lives.

As it turns out, the title of my post was correct -- it is an incomplete history of Steve Taylor.  I knew that he had been sent to prison for fraud once before, but my I missed finding the actual circumstances of his crime when I had searched for it.  So today, I would like to share what I have since discovered, via an old, archived article at the Bradford Telegraph and Argus web site: 

Gay helpline closes amid funds riddle

Volunteers and workers on a helpline set up to help Keighley gay people have resigned

The move comes after the Keighley-based chairman and committee members of the OUTline organisation complained to police about alleged irregularities in the activities of Steven Paul Taylor, also known as Simon Thorpe.

Mr Taylor, 23, of Raistrick Way, Shipley, and formerly of Garden Lane, Heaton, Brad-ford, is secretary/service manager of OUTline, a helpline set up to help Keighley's 5,000 gay men and women. It also provides free information on a range of issues for the town's gay and bisexual men.

Workers on the helpline have alleged that Taylor has:

• run up debts of around £20,000
• signed cheques and purchased goods knowing there were no funds to cover them
• leased a Rover car knowing funds were not available to pay for it
• told them he has left a trail of debt across the country believed to be in the region of £150,000
• Using the name of Simon Thorpe, Taylor told the Keighley News in January that he was the man behind the new 24-hour helpline.

[...]

The Keighley News spoke to Steven Taylor who told us that OUTline had now closed. He admitted he had signed cheques knowing there were no funds to cover them.

So there you have it. Sounds a lot like what he did to LACS recently. Once a con-man, always a con-man? I dunno. Well, everybody deserves a fourth or fifth chance. Right?  That said, there is little doubt in my mind that Steve Taylor would be the perfect PR man in the tobacco control industry. So when you get out of prison, Mr Taylor, you may want to put your CV in at the Universities of Bath or Stirling or even at ASH London. They could always use someone with your skill set, and there is always plenty of taxpayers' money for the taking. Good luck to you!

As a final vanity point on the story of Steven Paul Taylor, it's always interesting to see what people searched on to find my blog post about Taylor.  So, for the craic, here's a list of 50 search terms people used that led to Steve Taylor's page (in roughly alphabetical order):

incredibly social steve taylor
lord clark of windermere & steven taylor
more on steve taylor jailed
nannying tyrants steve taylor
stephen taylor coursing
stephen taylor coursing rochdale
stephen taylor fraud league against prison
stephen taylor pr
stephen taylor sentenced
steve taylor
steve taylor arrested
steve taylor corps
steve taylor corps charity
steve taylor corps charity fraud
steve taylor corps court case
steve taylor corps in courts
steve taylor corps jailed
steve taylor corps league
steve taylor corps news
steve taylor corps prison
"steve taylor corps" prison
"steve taylor" prison
steve taylor corps prison charge charity
steve taylor ex league
steve taylor forum on prisoner education
steve taylor fraud 2012
steve taylor fraud september 2012
steve taylor greyhounds
steve taylor guildford court
steve taylor howard league
steve taylor jailed
steve taylor jailed cornwall
steve taylor lacs
steve taylor lacs blog
steve taylor lacs picture
steve taylor lacs uk
steve taylor league against cruel sports
steve taylorcorps
steve taylorcorps fraud
steve taylorcorps twitter
steven paul taylor 16 months imprisonment
steven paul taylor court
steven paul taylor in court
steven paul taylor in prison
steven taylor fraud
steven taylor jailed
steven taylor lacs uk
steven taylor went to prison
steven taylorcorps prison rps
the steve taylor story 

Hmm. I'm sensing a pattern.

They Call It "Action" in Nottingham

This Is Nottingham reports that volunteers are wearing high-visibility clothing to "ask" people to stop smoking outside the Queen's Medical Centre and City Hospital's entrance or even on hospital grounds:

During the week volunteers and staff wearing high visibility clothing stood outside the hospitals between 1.30pm and 4.30pm, asking people to stop smoking or, if they wished to continue, to do so off hospital property.

Community protection officers also patrolled the sites and fined anyone found littering. In total, 21 on-the-spot fines were issues for littering.

Well, first off, don't litter, people. Get a personal ashtray -- I never leave home without one -- or learn to "field strip" the lit end of your cigarette and put the butt into your pocket.  Although they'll probably consider the ash as litter... so just get an ashtray, folks.

Right. You see how they operate. They are using the might of the state's uniformed officers to denormalise your lifestyle, and by not providing smoking shelters, a trash bin or some kind of ashtray they are expecting you to litter. If you're tempted to toss your butt on the ground, which is precisely what the hospital staff wants people to do it seems, community protection officers step in to fine your unhappy asses.  All to get you to quit smoking in line with this month's Stoptober campaign.

It's called the Kick The Butt campaign.  It's not the first time this year that Nottingham has harassed smokers for trying to enjoy a legal product out-fucking-doors, where it is legal to do so.  The BBC covered it here:

Uniformed officers will patrol Nottingham's two main hospitals in January in a bid to remind people of a non-smoking rule on hospital property.

Queen's Medical Centre and Nottingham City Hospital will use community protection officers to deter smokers.

A no-smoking rule was introduced at the city's hospitals five years ago, but is often ignored.

Under a week-long campaign in early January, the hospital will prosecute anyone who drops cigarette butts.

Nice, huh?  Prosecute you.  I might have chosen the word "persecute" but the BBC didn't ask me to write the article.  The hospital is so pleased with its hate campaign against you, they even wrote it about it:

A third week of action to stop patients and visitors from smoking outside Nottingham's hospitals has been successfully undertaken at the Queen's Medical Centre and City Hospital.

Kick the Butt Week was held from 15-19 October to raise awareness of the no smoking policy at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust (NUH) - and offer stop smoking support.

During the week between 1.30pm and 4.30pm, volunteers and staff wearing high visibility clothing politely asked people to stop smoking or, if they wished to continue, to do so off hospital property. This period is a peak visiting time and also a time when people often choose to smoke outside of the hospital's main entrances.

Local Community Protection Officers were also patrolling our sites and fining anyone found littering.
Some of the headlines from the week included:

• 15 Kick the Butt volunteers gave their time to patrol main entrances, politely asking smokers to move off site
• Nottinghamshire Community Protection Officers issued 21 on-the-spot fines to both staff and the public for littering (mainly for the discard of cigarette butts)
• New Leaf and Nottingham City Smoke-free Homes had a stand inside the QMC main entrance to promote smoking cessation.

And you have to wonder what kind of hateful bastards would volunteer to harass the visitors and ill people at the hospital. This has nothing to do with your health. This is about controlling your lifestyle, for which you pay a hefty amount of taxes to "enjoy."  This is what denormalisation looks like.  This is a hate campaign.

Finally, how did I learn of this masterful hate campaign against my northern friends?  From the Deborah Hutton Charity, which evidently has abandoned all charitable principles and decided to hitch a ride on the Tobacco Control Industry express train to hating smokers above all else.

That's right, Nottingham. You go! You go on behaving as inhumane, uncaring, horrible, hateful people against a minority of those who have done nothing at all to you and are NOT harming you, all the while guided by the shining holy light of fake charities such as the Deborah Hutton Charity, or ASH or CRUK.  Because, yeah, those high-visibility vests and your fucking evil attitudes towards your fellow human beings will cure cancer.  Dickheads.

Battle of Ideas

I have been quiet the past few days because I was lucky and privileged to attend the Battle of Ideas at the Barbican on Sunday, for which I owe many thanks to several people for making it happen (you know who you are).  Others have already blogged about the sessions, covering everything I would have written about, so if you want to know what it was like, check out these pages:

Tom Paine's "Compulsion Works" over at The Last Ditch is an excellent write-up of the events.

Angela Harbutt provides her views on a day well-spent here at the Liberal Vision blog.

And Dick Puddlecote reports on what he saw that day -- and the sad truth is that the True Believers in Public Health honestly believe you are incapable of raising your own children or making your own decisions.

So please do go read all of those accounts for truly valuable insights into the minds of the Public Health zealots' quest to save you from yourself, no matter how great the cost to taxpayers, the costs to society, and the even greater costs to people's lives -- all of us who are affected by legislation that seeks to dehumanise and denormalise everyone who does not subscribe to the gospel of Public Health.

I thoroughly enjoyed the sessions that I attended, and it seemed to me that the majority of the audience in attendance at the sessions were not aligned with the Public Health movement, which I take as a good thing

But the absolute best part of my day was getting to meet many fellow freedom fighters for the first time (most are in blogroll at right, and the few that are not shall be added shortly).  Without exception, everyone I met was awesome and really impressed me -- these are some of the nicest and smartest people I have ever had the privilege to meet.  Everyone was utterly gracious and kind.  It's safe to say that we all had a great time up at the pub, and pints of beer kept magically appearing in my hand.  Really fantastic and genuine people all around -- so do not believe anyone in Public Health or the Tobacco Control Industry who says otherwise.

So, again huge thanks to everyone I met for being excellent company on Sunday night.  It was my pleasure to meet all of you.