Steve Taylor - An Incomplete History

Please note: This is an off-topic personal interest post, which has almost nothing to do with the usual topics and people covered on this blog.  The only connection is that the subject had tweeted about the Hands Off Our Packs campaign and this brought him to my attention. I dug deep into this man's background and discovered that he has quite a history. Since then I've been following this man's story very closely. He is not a nannying tyrant like those usually featured on these pages, but I believe the story is worth writing about, so I'm writing it.  I have no affiliation or interest in any of the charities mentioned below.


On 7 September 2012, Steven (Steve) Paul Taylor, a.k.a Steve Taylor Corps, was sentenced to jail for 16 months for defrauding the League Against Cruel Sports charity (LACS) for nearly £15,000. He is expected to serve about 8 months in jail.  This is not Steve Taylor's first criminal conviction for fraud, but we will come to that later.

Steve Taylor first came to my attention on 27 June 2012.  On Twitter he had sent a tweet panning one of the Hands Off Our Packs campaign videos, although it's not clear which film he meant. I was a bit surprised that anyone who had a social marketing and public relations business called "Incredibly Social" would publicly tweet this:

It seemed rather anti-social to me, so I replied back to that tweet (which is below).  What followed next was a quick search on who this guy was and a series of tweets between Taylor and me. Unfortunately, he deleted most of tweets before I could save them, and what I have saved is a bit limited and does not show the entire conversation. Nevertheless, it was his smugness and arrogance that irked me enough to look into who he was. And what I found was quite revealing.

My first port of call was to check his website (which is no longer accessible and was so short-lived that not even the Wayback Machine had time to archive it) for contact info for a full name, but despite a claim on his site that he was a member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, nowhere on his site did he give his full name. That was odd. My next stop was to look at the domain registration of his web site.  So I did a WHOIS lookup on IncrediblySocial.net and found it registered to "Taylor Corps."  The administrative contact was listed as Steven Taylor.  Gotcha.

Before we go further, here are the saved tweets I do have, with explanations, and while I admit it is a bit petty, I hope it shows you why I became interested in Taylor's background:

The first tweet exchange. Note the #smug hashtag. This arrogance prompted me to look into his background.

The second exchange, after a quick search. I found two articles about a Steve Taylor under investigation for defrauding to different charities. I wasn't sure if it was him, but his reply almost confirmed it.

Links:
Sacked League Against Cruel Sports worker held in fraud probe - BBC News Surrey (21 November 2011)
Prisoner charity focus of fraud inquiry - TES Newspaper (15 September 2006, updated 11 May 2008)

This tweet received no reply, but at this point I was thinking that perhaps Steve Taylor was astroturfing for one of the usual suspect charities, like ASH, BHF, or CRUK. Turned out he wasn't, but we'll get to that.

Our  third exchange, me taunting him a little. Very likely I would have stopped here if he admitted who he was, but he didn't. I have a suspicion (based on that the tweet came from his Blackberry and the #ttfn - ta ta for now tag) that he was out at the pub and a bit drunk by this point.

Our fourth exchange. This is the last tweet I had saved before he deleted all of his tweets. I wasn't really planning on blogging about him, I just wanted him to admit who he was.

I also found this tweet on Twitter, which I retweeted. Evidently, somebody (I do not know who this is) was unhappy with Steve Taylor as far back as March 2012:

From here I do not have any more of Taylor's tweets to me saved, which is a shame. But I had noticed that Taylor's company, Incredibly Social, had done some social media and web site development for some businesses.  So, a bit inebriated myself by this time, I tweeted to one of them, only to find out that Steve Taylor was managing their Twitter account on their behalf:

I don't have the reply to this saved, but Steve Taylor said it was he managing the account, that I was dumb, and that I should call the pub directly.

After getting Taylor's response through the pub's account on Twitter, I tweeted:

The reply I got from Taylor was that I was merely the Twitter equivalent of gravel on the motorway. He deleted that tweet to me, but he re-wrote it and tweeted it again (note: I have only just captured this tweet, and Taylor has since changed his Twitter name at least twice - his latest Twitter name is @leaguesteve):

OK, so now you see how all of this came about.  Yes, a bit petty all around.  I was quite "pished" by this point, and I went to bed. When I woke up the next morning, all of Taylor's tweets to me were deleted.

Undaunted, a bit hungover, and still unsure if Steve Taylor had been astroturfing for the likes of ASH or other charities (which was my original mission to find out), I restarted my Internet search into his background.

If Taylor had any links to ASH, CRUK or any other charity that is actively campaigning for Plain Packs, I couldn't find any trace of them on-line.  The closest link to any "cancer" charity that I could find was the Michelle Harby Foundation, for which Steve Taylor had been the secretary.

Who registered their domain? Steve Taylor.

You will no longer find any mention of Steve Taylor on the foundation's web site -- it has been scrubbed completely, which is fair enough. 

To find out more on Steve Taylor's past involvement with the Michelle Harby Foundation, you have to rely on local news reports, the foundation's Facebook page and a few other sites:

Foundation honours mum - This is Devon (1 March 2011)
Facebook Wall Post indicating Taylor is a trustee of the charity  (22 May 2011)
Michelle charity launch - This is Plymouth (25 May 2011)
Love of music and the beach shared and remembered through the Michelle Harby Foundation - The People's Republic of South Devon (2 June 2011)
Memorial trust award first award - Cornish Guardian via This Is Cornwall (21 Sept 2011)
Michelle Harby Foundation Facebook wall photo shared with public
Scholarship is foundation's first award - Plymouth Herald via This is Cornwall (23 Sept 2011)
Twtrland Profile Page indicating Taylor (@stetay) is secretary for the foundation

Steve Taylor - @stetay
Image via Twtrland.com

Anyway, I could find no link between Taylor and ASH or between the Michelle Harby Foundation with other charities. One is left to presume that Steve Taylor was not astroturfing on behalf of anyone, nor was the charity advocating on behalf of other charities' campaigns. No, one presumes Taylor was just being an arse by tweeting his opinion to Hands Off Our Packs.

But who is this guy? I wondered. What is his story?  I was quite interested to find out. This was no longer about his slight at Hands Off Our Packs. I felt oddly compelled to find out all I could about this guy, for no particular reason other than he irked me the night before.  Not web stalking, more like investigating. Interestingly, one of the first things I noticed was the Guardian reported that Taylor is the nephew of Lord Clark of Windemere. Wow.

Anyway, I knew he was under investigation for the LACS fraud thing, which I'll cover more near the end of this post.  For the moment, however, let's focus on the other story, about the Prisoner Education Forum charity investigation. How odd that here are two very different charities that this guy worked for and there were accusations of fraud for both.

Here's how TES, a teachers' network organisation, reported it (emphasis added):

Police have launched a fraud investigation into a charity which campaigns for better education for offenders.

The Forum on Prisoner Education was wound up over the summer after its yearly budget of £150,000 ran out in less than five months. Steve Taylor, its director, and a former prisoner, quit in May.

Police in east London, where the forum was based, confirmed they are investigating a complaint relating to possible fraud at the charity, but declined to comment further.

The forum has failed to submit any accounts to the Charity Commission since its registration three years ago.

Mr Taylor, 30, told FE Focus that he was not aware of any police investigation and that he had not been involved in any fraudulent activity, but there had been overspending. 

Oh? So Steve Taylor was a former prisoner. Interesting. OK. OK. Picture becoming clearer.  TES goes on to say (emphasis added):

Mr Taylor has revealed in a newspaper article that 10 years ago he served four months in prison for an offence of deception.

He became involved in prison campaigning after the death of a friend in custody and he says trustees of the charity knew about his conviction and supported his appointment.

Right. Had to track down that article then and go back farther. I believe it might have been this one from the Guardian in 2001 called Interviews: Prisoners on their life in jail, written by Steve Taylor of course:

Steve Taylor, 24
Sentence: four months
Crime: deception

I spent some of my sentence in Armley jail in Leeds which is a hellhole. You spend 23 hours a day in your cell. You get books out of the library that have the last 20 pages missing. You get visits if the officers can be bothered. You get mail when they can be bothered. It's just a warehouse for people.

Fortunately I spent most of my sentence in HMP North Sea Camp which is an open prison. The buildings are a mess but the way it's run and the resources available are fantastic, and it's probably got the lowest re-conviction rates of all prisons. You've got to work because if you refuse they take you back to the local prison; there's a big farm which supplies the prison service with food and an excellent education department where I worked as a tutor, teaching basic skills to inmates who couldn't read or write.

If you read that article in full, the last paragraph talks about what it's like being gay in prison, how those who are openly gay may be housed with the sex offenders. Taylor said "[t]here really needs to be some policy movement in that area."

Here's another article -- a kind of diary written by Taylor for the Guardian in 2000 called Chain Reaction, which begins with:

Through a mixture of my own naivety and stupidity, I spent a short time in prison, and was released in February last year to be "tagged" at home. This meant that I had to stay at home between 7pm and 7am seven days a week for two months. Maybe my diary of that period might offer some insight of what is to come for Jonathan Aitken, who is now serving the last two months of his sentence under "home detention curfew".

Evidently, prison life helped to mould Taylor's future careers as director or trustee with various charities. He worked on a youth crime campaign for the National Children's Bureau, and then became a member of Howard League for Penal Reform and the British Society of Criminology.  His first proper charity role was likely with the Howard League for Penal Reform, a campaigning charity, for which he worked until about 2006.  Taylor is also credited as contributing to a 2002 documentary called "The Experiment" as part of an ethics advisory group.

The BBC reported on Taylor in its article "How drugs end up behind bars" in 2002 (emphasis added):

Ex-prisoner Steve Taylor, a trustee of the Howard League for Penal Reform, says there are two main reasons that drugs filter in from the outside world.

"Prison authorities are not always as cautious as they could be in checking for drugs; and in some cases they are not going to be because drugs calm prisoners down. It does the guards a favour to deal with people who just vegetate."

In 2004, Taylor also joined the Forum on Prisoner Education organisation (FPE), a pressure group charity where he became its Director and from where he lobbied ministers of Parliament. For instance, here's a link to a Memorandum of Evidence that Taylor wrote for MPs about prisoner education.  He also advocated for Internet access for prisoners. Then in 2005, Taylor was awarded the Longford prize for his ""outstanding contribution to social and penal reform."  The Independent reported Taylor's achievement in December 2005, but Taylor didn't feel up to discussing his past:

During the two years that Mr Tayor has headed the Forum on Prisoner Education pressure group, he has appeared regularly in the media, given evidence to Parliament and produced a widely praised report calling for inmates to receive unrestricted access to the internet.

In addition, he tours jails giving practical advice to inmates on gaining qualifications as a route out of crime.

Mr Taylor, 29, who declines to discuss why he was jailed, said: "It's important to me that we spend as much time as possible talking to people on the ground to see what we can do to help. I have to make sure we're in the real world. I can't be bothered with hypothetical carrying-on about abstract issues."

By all appearances then, it seemed that Taylor had certainly turned his life around after his brief stint in prison, and things were definitely looking up for the young man. He had political influence and direct access to MPs.  He was honing his media skills and was often quoted in various news sources regarding penal education.  TES called him a "staunch defender of offenders' right to learn" in this article in 2005:

Mr Taylor has been an outspoken advocate of the work of prison lecturers, once being quoted as saying: "No one comes into prisoner education for the money. People do it because they want to make a difference to people's lives and communities."

The forum has been a regular critic of Government prison policy, citing the size of the jail population, which it says has increased at the same time as a reduction in the amount of education for prisoners, increasing their chance of reoffending.

While being open about serving time in prison, he has been reluctant to speak about it - pointing out the charity believes everyone should be given a second chance after their release.

Steve P. Taylor - Writer/Activist
Image via www.evi.com "facts about Steve P Taylor"

But Steve Taylor's time advocating for prisoners' rights was not to last.  As previously noted above, the FPE ran into "financial difficulties" and closed down in 2006. Taylor denied any involvement in fraudulent activity, and it's unclear what the findings of that investigation were. Internet searches have revealed nothing more on the matter, but perhaps I missed something.  Furthermore, the Howard League for Penal Reform's annual report for 2005/06 indicates that Taylor was no longer a trustee of their charity from June 2006 (PDF).

For a short time, there was even a Wikipedia page about him, mainly about his writing career (he wrote a book). But that page was deleted in early 2009. Curiously, but most likely unrelated, the one person who voted to keep Taylor's entry on the site has been banned for sockpuppetry.

At some point in 2009 or earlier, Taylor joined the League Against Cruel Sports (LACS). The earliest references I can find date to June 2009, where he appears on Iain Dale's Diary, and October 2009, where he appears in the press as LACS's head of campaigns and communications. Perhaps he genuinely believed in the charity's mission, or perhaps he desired to make use of his PR background and previous charity and campaign work.  Whatever his reasons, LACS certainly had political influence at Parliament, and Taylor's previous experience dealing directly with MPs would serve him well in his new role.

Indeed, by now Taylor had mastered the art of the sensationalised blurb, for here in respect of five men arrested for hare hunting, he is quoted by the Wiltshire Tiimes as saying:

“Hare coursing was banned by the Hunting Act. People who want to bring it back say it is pest control but it is a blood sport

“Some hare coursers suggest muzzling the dogs so that the hare doesn’t get eaten, but the problem is that the greyhound, or dog, causes even more damage to the hare with the force of the dog. It is a horrifically cruel sport and we would welcome Wiltshire Police taking a hardline approach on it.” 

A few years later, upon release of a campaign video spoof for LACS, Taylor said:

"The film's a bit of fun but it makes an important point. The hunters are the only group of criminals in society who flirt with this idea that they are in some way victime (sic) of the law, rather than transgressers (sic) of it."

To my regular readers, no doubt the tone of these statements sounds a lot like the rhetoric of the tobacco control industry's spokespeople. It is a learned skill.

In fact, the skill of firing off letters of complaint demanding retractions or corrections at the media is a classic PR tactic, which Taylor employs here in 2010:

A report on the ‘thriving’ population of Irish hares on Oyster Island featured at approximately 39 minutes into the above programme. In the voiceover, the reporter says that, in hare coursing “…the dogs are muzzled to minimise injuries, and after competitions, the hares are released back to where they came from.”

We believe this to be inaccurate and misleading and would like to see an urgent correction on a future edition of the programme.

[...]

In the interests of accurate and balanced reporting, we would ask you to correct these errors as a matter of urgency.

Yours sincerely
Steve Taylor
Head of Campaigns & Communications

Earlier setbacks forgotten, and notwithstanding a minor issue of censure with the Charity Commission, it would seem that things were looking for very good for Steve Taylor once again.  But things took a turn for the worse for Taylor again in November of 2011.  LACS dismissed Taylor for gross misconduct. From the press release dated 17 November 2011:

Steve Taylor, a member of staff at the League Against Cruel Sports has been dismissed for gross misconduct following a disciplinary investigation concerning expenses claims.

The disciplinary papers have been handed to the police and the Charity Commission has been informed as the member of staff concerned has previously worked for other charities.

This was followed up the next day by Guido Fawkes, clearly enjoying a brief moment of irony. And a few days later with Steve Taylor's arrest on suspicion of fraud.

On 2 April 2012, Taylor was charged and accused of one count of fraud by false representation. Then in June, the Plymouth Herald (via This is Plymouth) wrote:

A SALTASH man accused of defrauding an anti-hunting organisation is to appear at Crown Court next month.

Steven Taylor, aged 35, was arrested last year.

Taylor, who worked for Surrey-based charity the League Against Cruel Sports, was released from the charity following a disciplinary investigation centring on expenses claims.
[...]
He appeared at Guildford magistrates court yesterday where his case was committed to Guildford Crown Court on July 27 for a plea and case management hearing. He was granted unconditional bail by Guildford Magistrates.

And a little over a week later, Steven Paul Taylor came to my attention on Twitter, which you have already read above.

One thing I did not expect to happen was that Taylor would plead guilty at his hearing. I figured he would plead his innocence and take the matter to a proper trial.  But he did not, and I have no idea why.  So he had a little over a month to get his affairs in order before his sentencing on 7 September 2012.

During this time I checked up on his tweets occasionally.  When he slagged off a small business's web site map (much in the same way he panned HOOPs), I couldn't resist a jab at him:

So am I going to write to Mr Taylor?  Here's my answer to him on that:

OK, yes, my tweets were a bit petty.  Besides, my handwriting is terrible, and it would seem HMP High Down doesn't have Internet access for prisoners. If only Taylor had succeeded in that campaign I could have sent him a tweet or something.  Perhaps everyone deserves a second chance, or even a third and fourth chance to make things right. I sincerely hope that Taylor has finally learnt his lesson.

In closing: on 7 September 2012, Steve Taylor was sentenced to jail for 16 months. It is expected he will serve about half of that.

***[[ Update 18 November 2012:  for a minor update on this post and to learn of Taylor's first fraud conviction, see also this post. ]] ***

Blurring the Lines

Ah, the Internet.  The first time I "experienced" it was in the mid-80s, although I don't remember anyone calling it the Internet back then. Whilst the technology and interface from then and now is vastly different, the Internet, in my view, has changed little apart from a much greater number of people using it.  This is a gross oversimplification, but hear me out.

Around 1982 or so, my step-uncle had an Apple IIe, if I recall correctly; my immediate family was much too poor to even own a colour television at the time. He was about four years older than me and, looking back, I have the impression that he barely tolerated my presence when we came over to visit. Even so, on rare occasions he invited me up to his room where he kept the Apple computer and he would play games whilst I watched.  He never let me play any games, which is the only thing I wanted to do back then.  So, yeah, he was a bit of a dick.

A few years later my step-uncle sold his IIe and upgraded to the Macintosh. I suspect it cost a fortune. He spent more than a little extra to get a 100 baud modem, and it was on this rig that I first became aware of what we now call the Internet*. My step-uncle still didn't let me touch the computer, but he liked to brag and show all the stuff it could do. So for my benefit, I suppose, he put the telephone receiver into the modem's cradle and dialled up a local "bulletin board."

(*Technically, the film War Games with Matthew Broderick introduced me to the concept of networked computers, but even a naive twelve-year-old understood that a film was a work of fiction. Computers did not talk!)

Just making the connection to the board took ages.  I mean that. The bulletin board computer's line was busy for about an hour. When at last the connection was made and the initial handshake completed, my step-uncle tapped on the keyboard for a time, and navigated through the system via some arcane series of command line instructions that I was unable to follow. He then located some sort of file to download. It was probably around 10kb if that.

By today's standards, it was a tiny file that would take no time at all to download, but back then on a 100 baud modem, it took close to forever.  We waited.  And waited. When forever finally passed, the downloaded file probably looked a little something like this:

So there you go, that was my introduction to the wild world of on-line computing. The very first thing I ever saw on-line was an ASCII representation of porn.  I was 13-years-old.  As you can imagine, the Internet has hardly changed.

But this post isn't about porn. It's about people using the Internet and what it has always been like. In other words, trolling.  So let's fast-forward about a decade to the time of Internet Chat Relay, or IRC.

IRC is very much in use today, but in the early 90s before the web, it was the protocol of choice (for me, anyway) to connect to other computers and to chat with others. In the 80s, you typically connected to individual computers, which were rarely connected to anything else.  But IRC made real-time chatting with people all over the world very easy with its thousands of various public chat rooms, or channels. The details of how IRC works don't matter, suffice to say that it was (and I presume still is) an "anything goes" kind of place.

Every channel had its own rules and etiquette, which often would be displayed on screen when you first joined a channel.  Almost every channel suffered a multitude of people who would come in and disregard the etiquette and rules just for a laugh. We called them trolls.  The popular channels nearly always had several moderators called ChanOps (Channel Operators) who could "kick" and/or ban users from the channel.  Moderation also could be done automatically with the use of bots -- programmed scripts that look for keywords typed in the channel. So, say the wrong thing, and you got booted or kicked. Get kicked often enough and get banned.

But bans could not keep the trolls out. It's the easiest thing in the world to change your name or "nick" on IRC.  And it was always fairly easy for some dedicated trolls (or anyone) to spoof their IP address.  Trolls persisted, they were relentless and nasty, and it was common enough that you became inured to it, barely noticing it unless they directed their attention at you. If the trolls' target left a room and joined another, the trolls would follow him automatically and continue their harassment until he quit IRC.

There were channel invasions, too -- a small or large group of IRC users with the sole purpose of taking over the channel for their own use, trolling everyone until they left the room, and then once that job was done, taking over the channel and preventing anyone from joining, or just shutting it down. Whatever suited them.

On a good day, IRC was a fun, social place where you could chat with like-minded folk about whatever topic, trade files and programmes, learn some new code or hear about some new tech from the geeks in the know. It was a place to hang out on-line.  But there were always trolls, and they were often particularly nasty.  The worst of them would try to hack you (they weren't really hackers, mind you) and if they succeeded, your PC might become an expensive paper weight requiring a complete wipe and reinstall of everything. Backups were vital.

I haven't used IRC since about 2000, but I doubt it's changed much.  IRC changed me, however. It opened my eyes to see parts of the world I did not know existed. It was a place where both the best and worst of humanity coexisted. But for all of its flaws, for all of the trolls and hateful bastards out there in the world, it was a simple matter of disconnecting from IRC to make the bad stuff go away. Conversations in the channels did not persist.  If and when you came back, all the bad stuff said was gone and you could start over.

Nobody forced you to use IRC. You always had a choice, and a choice of channels to use. You could always make your own channel.  And you could avoid trolls easily enough.

But a few years later the world wide web changed how we use the Internet. What was once temporary had the ability to become permanent. Web pages could persist indefinitely for better or worse.  Creating your own web page was relatively easy and you could write anything you wanted, about anyone (good or bad) and it would stay up for as long as you wanted, with all of the consequences one could possibly desire.

Well, you know the story of the web, but the point of my long-windedness above is to explain that hateful trolling is nothing new. I've dealt with enough of them that it doesn't faze me. Words are only words. Only you can give them power to hurt you.  But lately, suddenly everyone is saying we need to do something about trolls and on-line bullying, as if it's some huge crisis on par with dealing with a four-mile wide asteroid heading straight for earth. And it just ain't a crisis. Hell, it doesn't even class as bullying. 

For instance, Wayne Carr weighs in here about celebs using passive-aggressive retweets to incite their fan base to attack their critics, or flat out asking them to go on the attack.  He's basically saying that celebrities ought to behave better than your average Joe Schmoe on Twitter, because they are celebrities, with fans, all of them stupid and mindless drones, I guess.  Also, that people use Twitter as support network and that they have somehow been harmed by the trolls.

Look, if you use Twitter as a support network, may I suggest you step away from the computer and go outside and make some real friends?  Obnoxio The Clown wisely points out the fallacy of using Twitter as a vital social support network (emphasis in original):

But for all that, I have a major, major, bone to pick with the author:

Twitter was a vital support network for her.

Er, no.
Twitter is not a vital support network for anyone. Twitter is an open platform for people to say things on and it's quite clearly a place where unpleasant and unkind things are often said. Choosing to use twitter as a support network means that you are also going to open yourself up to things that are not supportive and the consequences thereof.

That's exactly the point. You choose to use it. At any time, you can choose to stop or switch off.  If you are being trolled, you can walk away and ignore it. Twitter is not a vital anything. It's at best a marketing tool with limited social features. It can be entertaining at times, or useful for networking with people who share interesting articles, etc. But it's not vital, and it's not a support network.

I'm not going to lie to you, I hate how Twitter is used by some people to give us all up-to-the-millisecond updates on your life's status. I'd rather people attempted to bully me; that would be far more entertaining. Who gives a fuck what you're doing at any moment of the day?  I don't. If a tweet is about someone's shitty train journey, I ignore it and move on till I find something that does interest me. If someone is cluttering up my timeline with incessant inanity, I unfollow them.  To be fair, sometimes I will have a short and public conversation directly with people on Twitter that is of a more personal nature, but I presume that anyone who follows me ignores those tweets, as I tend to ignore others when they do the same. 

See, my capacity to ignore stuff I don't like is almost limitless. I have to choose to engage with something or someone, and the stuff I cover on this blog I've chosen to engage with in some way. Given my ability to choose what to pay attention to, it's quite impossible to bully me on Twitter or elsewhere. Words have no power over me unless I choose to give those words power. And I'm not gonna do it.

I'm not oblivious to what's happening around me, though. I can see that there is a push to sanitise everyone's on-line conduct, to make the world, both on-line and off-line, as inoffensive as possible. To which I think: Well, isn't it human nature to be nasty to others? It's the one thing our species does incredibly well. The second thing we do well is complain about what others are doing. And the third thing we do well is try to force one group's beliefs onto another group who wants no part of that belief system.  Then we're back to being nasty again.  That about sums up 75% of the human experience.

Regardless, we're blurring the lines of what constitutes abuse, bullying and harassment. Particularly in the on-line world.  People who dare to criticise others are being called trolls, when in fact it's merely criticism. There's a world of difference between criticising and trolling. Sometimes criticism comes with colourful language and other opinions, but that doesn't make it abusive or even trolling. It's not harassment, either.

In the case of this blog, it's just me writing about people who are deliberately interfering with my life because they think they know what is best for me and everyone else. They don't. That's why I write.  Nobody is forced to read what I write. You as a reader make a choice to do so. And you can stop reading it at any time.  If you do read it and don't like what I said, you have further choices to make.  But you haven't been bullied, and you haven't been abused, and you haven't been harassed by me.

I do not contact people in the tobacco control industry, although I sometimes do tweet to a few people who support tobacco control industry policies for brief debate (or in a few cases just to be silly, which they understood it for what it was and replied similarly). I do not e-mail to TCI or their supporters. I avoid tweeting to anyone in TCI. I do not follow them on Twitter. I keep to myself to myself. I am the furthest thing from a troll. I don't even hate the people I write about.  I don't like them; I don't like what they say or do, but I don't hate them.

When someone who works with ASH followed me on Twitter, I sent these two messages:

• Hi [redacted]. I have a rule that I don't follow anyone from ASH or other TC groups. Mainly it's to avoid antagonising each other on Twitter...
• I won't block you, though. Your tweets are generally fair, and you don't seem rabid to me. Anyway, follow away if you like. :)

The reply was "no bother, not the antagonising sort" and then we had a silly banter about both of our lavish lifestyles that neither of us have, you know just a little piss taking. And that's how it should be. Treated with respect and humour. Who can complain about that? We disagree very strongly on tobacco control, but we are still people, not unthinking worker bee errand boys for the cause.  I'm absolutely certain he and I could sit down over a few pints and have a laugh amicably debating the merits or demerits of tobacco control.

Unfortunately, it's not like that with everyone.  And not everyone is capable of understanding that we're just ordinary people, not on anyone's payroll to write our opinions.

If you say anything at all publicly, you must expect to get criticism.  This fact is too often lost on those in tobacco control, who must truly believe that they should be immune from criticism by dint of their profession in the Public Health religion.

The Internet is the greatest equaliser in the fight against all forms of tyranny and oppression that we ordinary folk have ever seen. It's awesome in its power, for both good and bad.

It's why many governments seek to control it. It's why certain mainstream media outlets call for greater regulation. It's why some people believe it should be censored, so that they can stifle their critics and attempt to weaken any opposition to their views. It's because they fear us, the everyday common people who can think for themselves, who may or may not choose to be anonymous (although we're never truly anonymous) and write about those who we believe are damaging our societies. They create sites that, should they prevail in their quest for eradication, have no other purpose than to permanently and maliciously brand those who had disagreed with them. They attack us because they are afraid. 

Of us.

We are the faceless human beings, sitting before a keyboard and screen and writing, people who individually have no power, no political influence, and no desire to control anyone.

And they call us bullies and trolls?  Please.

The Game

Dick Puddlecote's recent blog post, titled "Democracy Does Not Equal Freedom," has led to me thinking about the world we live in.  Just a little bit.  If I thought too much about it, I might actually be spurred in to action. And wouldn't that be something?  Anyway, I figure if you come to my blog, there's a 99% chance you've already read DP's post, but if you haven't, it's well worth your time. 

One line DP wrote particularly stands out for me:

"Democracy destroys altruism in governance and replaces it with naked self-interest backed up by a tyranny of the majority."

It's a great line. I agree with it in principle, but with sincere apologies to DP, I would gently and slightly modify it to:

"Democracy destroys the remote possibility of altruism in governance and replaces it with naked self-interest backed up by a tyranny of majority."

When altruism does reluctantly rear its head, it's nearly always to protect the survival of one or many whilst sacrificing your own chances of survival. In other words, you need to unselfishly risk your life or well-being to ensure that others will survive. Altruism is most often an instinctual reaction requiring little or no conscious thought or decision making.  And this, in my view, describes no politician that I know of. This does not mean that politicians are inherently duplicitous or even bad people. They are simply self-serving, like most of us are.

Any person who willingly enters the political arena initially out of genuine concern for others will be corrupted by the system as a matter of course.  Once the game begins in earnest, politicians fight for their own survival in the arena, and we citizens become their pawns -- sacrificial gambits on a geographical chessboard to further the politician's career.

When a politician utters "we must protect people from" whatever genuine or imaginary harm, what he or she is saying is: "I seek to convince you that I am genuinely interested in your well being, so long as this action does not hurt my political career."  They may indeed have genuine concern for some harmed group; there may even be sympathy. But this is not altruism.

Altruism cannot exist in any system of governance. Politics does not reward altruistic game players.  These concepts are incompatible.

Politics is a game of a million compromises and trade-offs. For the politician to win a victory for one battle often requires a sacrifice in a different battle. This is not altruism. It is advantage and leverage via the mechanism of compromise. Ideals must be abandoned, perhaps temporarily, and promises too often are broken.  Few politicians will survive in the arena with their integrity intact or unscathed.

There are far too many players in the political game; there are hundreds of thousands more standing on the sidelines awaiting their turn, with a near limitless amount of moves that can be played to effect control.  Ultimately, it is a game that can neither be won nor lost. It is a game of ego and power, of foolish bravado and insincere gestures. It is entirely a human construct and it is our greatest folly.

Yet with all the attention the political game receives, for all its players and its scandal-hungry spectators, it pales in comparison to the greatest game of all:  The game of life.  It has only one rule, and that rule is to survive.

Eventually, we are all sacrificed in the game of life, irrespective of how we played it.

A Little More Hypocrisy, If You Don't Mind

Last night on Twitter, I saw this campaign mentioned which is about reforming Section 5 of the 1986 Public Order Act, that wacky and abused British law that says you can be arrested if you possibly disturb, upset, or offend someone.  It's called Reform Section 5 - Feel Free to Insult Me.

Naturally, I support the right to free speech, even offensive speech.  Do people really need to arrested for tweeting dumb-ass comments? Even despicable racist comments?  I hardly think so. Nobody has the right to not be offended.  Anyway, whilst perusing the campaign's site, I clicked through to its supporters page, as you do, and was dismayed to see that at least two MPs listed as supporting this reform 5 campaign are also known supporters of plain packaging. 

Stop. Hold up a moment, bruv, I said to myself.

We all know that proponents for plain packaging have dressed it up as a Public Health issue, to protect the gullible children and women, but what it really is about is whether tobacco companies have the right to package their products in the manner of their choosing. It's about speech. Free speech.

Now you can argue all you like that packaging is not a matter for free speech but I really don't see a difference.  Speech takes on many forms. A photo. A drawing. Verbal and written communication. A logo or trade mark.  A middle finger, or two fingers... that is speech.  A raised eyebrow or a frown ... that is also speech. Dropping trousers, bending over and mooning someone ... yeah, that's speech, too.  Anything that conveys an idea to another must be considered as speech. A packet of cigarettes, even.  You don't have to like it.

But it is all speech. In a truly free society, all speech must be protected.

Plain packaging, however, deliberately aims to suppress free speech for a particular commodity.  It additionally aims to suppress a consumer's ability to identify with that form of speech, if that consumer chooses to do so. We might call that brand identity. So plain packaging interferes with my ability to freely express myself by using a particular product, in much the same way that computer users identify as PC or Apple.

So about those MPs.  Have you met Fiona Bruce MP?  She appears on our Sheep-Minions page as a supporter of plain packaging. Fiona Bruce is also a hypocrite for supporting the Reform 5 campaign. She is quoted here on the supporters page as saying:

"I support the Reform Section 5 campaign because freedom of speech is one of the most precious – and fundamental – elements of a free society. Lose that and you risk losing a whole lot more."

Which is all well and good, but how on earth can she hold that view whilst simultaneously saying that tobacco companies and consumers of tobacco products do not have a right to free speech?  This is utterly hypocritical.

So I really cannot see how Fiona Bruce can glom onto a campaign espousing the virtues -- no, the right to freedom of speech for all if she's so willing to restrict the speech of certain others that she disagrees with.  But isn't that always the way? 

We also note that Sheep-Minion Caroline Lucas MP also appears as a supporter of the Reform Section 5 campaign.

No doubt there are many more lurking out there, pretending to care about free speech, so long as the speaker suits them, and it suits their political careers.

This is why I want to Vote Them All Out.  Let's ensure we do not forget these two hypocrites.

Meanwhile, if you want to view the Reform 5 campaign's latest video, you can watch it here. It's got music and everything.

Trust No One, Especially the Media

Gerard Tubb of Sky News believes he got a "scoop."  By all appearances on Twitter, he seems to be incredibly proud of his exposé.  That's his word, by the way. Exposé.  I like that.  It makes it sound all kinds of "journalistical," like Tubb had battled the dark telephonic forces of evil, risking his life and his eternal soul to ferret out the truth for the greater public good. 

You see, Gerard Tubb, with his immense investigative reporting skills, claims he has reported a previously unknown fact.  I'm not certain which planet Tubb has been living on the past few decades, but if he has only now just uncovered a fact that all of us have known for yonks, then he's certainly not from around these parts.

Which startling fact did Tubb unearth in his exposé?

The anti-smokers want to abolish all smoking in the UK by 2032.

Well, I'm stunned. I'm certain you are, too. I mean, this information has opened my eyes; it has changed my life. And I have only Gerard Tubb to thank for it.

Thank you, Mr Tubb. Thank you so very much, kind sir. You are a true hero in journalism. It will be only a matter of time before you win awards for your outstanding journalism skills that have changed all of our lives.

Actually, it hasn't changed my life at all. And it hasn't changed yours either. We've always known this fact. Perhaps we did not know the precise year that Fresh NE would aim for (and this must be that elusive fact he convinced a presumably reluctant Alisa Rutter to part with), but Gerard Tubb's scoop -- sorry, I meant to say, his exposé, darling -- is hardly news to anyone.

Fact: The anti-smokers have been trying to abolish smoking since people started to smoke.

Every year we get new calls for the total abolition of all tobacco products (not just smoking) by some date or other, in various places all over the world.  So if reporting on Fresh NE's upcoming campaign to eradicate smokers from existence is a previously unknown fact to Gerard Tubb, then could one presume that Tubb has just recently extricated his head from his arse and decided to have a bit of a look-round?

Perhaps the "Making Smoking History for Children" slogan was not prominent enough on Fresh NE's website?

Look, I found a clue.

Understandably, Tubb's shocking exposé has angered some tobacco consumers -- honest, hard-working people who pay more than their fair share of tax, and who have been getting the shaft relentlessly for well over a decade as fake charities use their shady influence in government to enact nannying legislation to harass and denormalise those who are using a legal product, to restrict their liberty and take away their freedom to socialise with peers indoors at private businesses.

Some people are angry because Tubb did not include any opposing viewpoints in his exposé.  For as Tubb eloquently explained on Twitter, he chose not to include the opposition "Because facts don't need opposing views."

Well, you can be angry at Tubb's omission if you like, but by now we should all be used to the fact that the media is very much against smokers. Getting angry at Tubb for not including opposing views in his exposé is like getting angry at sunshine for giving you a sunburn. Pointless.  The media is not on "our side."  We should not trust the media to present a balanced viewpoint on anything. Ever. The media is a business in competition with other corporations selling you their filtered version of the news. If you think the media should be fair, impartial and honest, then do try to consider that it never has been these things and it never will be. For if it were, they would be out of business within a few years, because only unbridled sensationalism truly sells the news.

So to be fair, some of that anger from smokers was misdirected and some of it used colourful invective.  Some of the anger, to be equally fair, Tubb misinterpreted as being directed at him or as abuse.  Indeed, by claiming that he received abuse (for he certainly did not), he truly pissed off me.  What Gerard Tubb got was criticism and debate from the opposition he chose to exclude from his exposé.

Never mind that Tubb invited himself to the debate by choosing to reply to Christopher Snowdon's tweet about the article.  Gerard Tubb opened the door, and perhaps disliking what he saw on the other side, he tried to close the door only to find that a large foot had been placed in the doorway.  Caught out by his schoolboy error, he shamefully chose to play the victim card:

Translation: People criticised me = abuse. *sniffle*

He was not abused, but that criticism and debate infuriated him.  How dare anyone tell him how to do his job? Do they not understand the difference between the reporting of fact and campaigning?

Well, I think we do understand the difference, Mr Tubb. I think we get it just fine. I do not take issue with you avoiding to include the opposition in your story. It would have been nice, but I'm used to only one side of the story appearing in the media. I don't expect anything.  But looking at all of your tweet and retweet history after you wrote your exposé (which is laden with anti-smoking rhetoric) and after you claimed that you were so terribly abused, and the fact that you are now following both Alisa Rutter and Fresh NE on Twitter, I believe a lot of people will conclude all by themselves that you are one of them.

An anti-smoker.

Of course, none of this proves you hate smokers or are indeed campaigning on behalf of the tobacco control industry.  It's only conjecture. Whether you are or are not an anti-smoker campaigner is irrelevant.

Because the real fact, which requires no unearthing nor any sort of exposé, is that we do not trust anyone. We do not trust politicians in any party. We do not trust the NHS. We do not trust the charities (both fake and real) who claim they want to save us all from ourselves.  But most importantly, we do not trust anyone who works in the media.

Which means we do not trust the likes of you, Gerard Tubb.  I suppose you'll think this is abuse too.  It's not. It's just a fact. A well-known fact, to be honest.

(But if you do feel abused, at least you can take comfort in knowing that the UK's #3 Libertarian blogger* has apologised on behalf of The Cause.  *Note: I had never heard of this bronze medal blogger guy until the other day... Don't think we need an apologist on the libertarian side, but whatever....)

Provided purely for your entertainment, below is the tweet conversation between Snowdon and Tubb, which apparently kicked off a veritable torrent of horrible abuse by other people on Twitter.  Awful, terrible abuse. Which wasn't abusive at all.  I quite enjoyed the subliminal ads bit -- Big Tobacco never ceases to amaze me with their invisible innovation, and secretive marketing aimed at fetuses in the womb, probably.

Professor of Prohibition

Clearly relishing that exuberant natural high of a successful hate campaign against Australian smokers, master miserabilist* Mike Daube wrote a little somethin' a little over a week ago. It's called, "Bring on the end of tobacco use – but not a total ban tomorrow".  It's the usual claptrap one would expect, i.e. plain packaging is not the end, but only the beginning of their holy quest of eradicating smokers from existence.

The Professor of Prohibition and Twattery even opines as to what he believes tobacco companies will do next, although one must presume it's his trade mark bland attempt at humour (emphasis added for the "knee-slapping funny" parts, but all of it is quite entertaining):

[Big Tobacco] will continue to spend big on public relations; use loopholes in the advertising ban legislation (such as for “political” advertising); try to develop further in-store promotions; ensure the maximum number of sales outlets; re-name brands for further publicity; reduce prices in the short term, willing to take a loss in Australia to undercut plain packaging’s impact here and globally; claim that plain packaging has “failed” if all smoking has not disappeared by 2 December; beat up such illicit sales as they can find or generate; promote alternatives to conventional cigarettes that may still keep the industry in business and ultimately help to keep people smoking, such as e-cigarettes or snus; try to make the life of governments difficult with time-consuming activities like FOI requests; run sob-stories about retailers who can’t feed their children because cigarette sales are falling; and (as ever) look for creative ways to promote or maintain cigarette sales in what their own documents describe as the “dark market”.

But Mike Daube loves you, smoker.  He doesn't want to ban tobacco use right now.  No, he wants to make it as difficult as possible for as long as possible to humiliate you, to harass you, to make you a third-class citizen, a reject of civilised society, so that you "choose" to quit smoking in accordance with the gospel of Public Health.  Because he's only trying to help, you see (emphasis added):

We have to recognise that some smokers find it hard to quit, and a complete ban on smoking is a measure that could lead to legitimate counter-arguments. Proposals for a total ban on smoking would provide justification for hitherto unsubstantiated claims from tobacco companies and their fellow-travellers that tobacco control advocates are penalising and persecuting smokers, when the reality is that our activities are aimed at helping them, and preventing young people from starting to smoke.

Ah, well thanks for the help I didn't ask for, but it appears to me that you're trying to keep your industry alive for as long as possible, all so you can continue to milk the government cash cow.  Is that what the paragraph really says?  Don't give smokers any justification to claim persecution -- just whittle away at their resolve in a piecemeal fashion over the course of many long years?  Let's not hurt our careers here, fellow anti-smokers. They're on to us.

That's how I interpret it.  I could be wrong...

Wait. No. I'm not wrong. Here are some proposals that you think are worth considering:

There has been much discussion in the tobacco control literature and the community about a range of approaches. These include:

• Extending restrictions on smoking in any environment so that it essentially becomes a practice only for consenting adults in private.

And where would that be? People like you are won't let us smoke in restaurants, pubs, and are actively seeking to ban smoking in our own homes. Where is this magical private place that smokers will be allowed to indulge their tobacco use? Huh?

• Reducing the supply of tobacco in the market.
• Licensing schemes for smokers.

Why not just tattoo us while you're at it? 

• Restricting cigarette sales to specific outlets, such as pharmacies.
• A government take-over of the tobacco industry.

Oh? Government takeover? Very nice. Now we see the crux of the matter.  Why should private companies be allowed to profit when the government can take all of that profit for itself?  Doesn't that sound like some dictatorial regime in Africa somewhere?  Sounds like pure communism to me.

• Banning tobacco sales to anyone born beyond a specific year.
• Manipulating the cigarette itself.

How so?  To make it taste like shit?  To poison it in some way? To reduce its size? What exactly is your plan?  This is just smacks of fucking evil. Yes, I know you don't see it that way, Mike. To you, it's all necessary to save us all from ourselves.

• Mandating reduced supply of tobacco into the market.

Why? To drive up prices artificially (like the diamonds market) so that the government-owned tobacco suppliers can charge a greater premium and rake in ever-increasing profits. Clever.

• Proper implementation of legislation banning sales to minors – and progressively reducing the number of tobacco sales outlets.

You already have proper legislation banning sales to minors -- hell, nearly everywhere does. What more can you do? Cut off the hands of any kids who manage to buy a packet of cigarettes? Hang people for selling tobacco to minors?  Why not just throw them in prison camps waiting for their turn in the gas chamber?

• Suing tobacco companies for the costs of harm caused by their products.

Like that hasn't been happening already? Earth to Mike Daube... ... hello?

• Setting a date by which tobacco companies have to demonstrate that their products meet normal consumer standards. After that date cigarettes would simply not be permitted in the market.

Ah. That's a good one.  You and your sheep-minion cronies get to devise "normal standards," rules designed in such a fashion that you know a cigarette could never meet them (which you admit).

• Progressively reducing the number of sales outlets.

I think it's fairly safe to say that you're a prohibitionist twat from hell, Mike.  Instead of having the courage to support it outright, however, you think it's better to demean, demoralise and denormalise smokers over the course of many years in pursuit of your wank-worthy dream of everyone living forever.  How compassionate.

Meanwhile, there's always the fatties and other big corporations to go after. Job security in the Public Health Sector, after all.

*Yes, I stole miserabilist from Dick Puddlecote. Hope you don't mind, DP.

Blog Name Changed

It's the 1st of September and from today we are now called Nannying Tyrants.

We'll miss the Citizens United against bit...

That is all.

Thank you.

Not Just a Lifestyle Choice - It's a Career Now

Last I checked, which was right now, I am not being paid to smoke. I have never been paid to smoke. Not that I would mind if someone said to me, "We would like to pay you for being a smoker."  To which my response would be, "Awesome."

Alas, that imaginary conversation and job offer will never happen.  Even so, the Root of All Evil considers smoking a career (emphasis added unnecessarily, I admit):

"Smokers tend to be pretty loyal and stick with brands through their smoking career."

I didn't realise that smoking was a career choice.  Perhaps the Root of All Evil is advocating for yet another way to tax smokers.  See, if smoking is a job, we would have to pay even more tax to our nanny state governments to harass, denormalise and demonise us.  In the UK, the duty on tobacco is around "£5.83 for a packet of cigarettes and £10.81 for a 50g pouch of tobacco" according to this article on the illicit trade.

Anyway, do read the rest of the article. You will see that not even plain packaging is enough to stop Big Tobacco from tempting the kiddies. "Product Innovation" will be next up against the wall. This means that not only will Australia's government use a cigarette packet to promote its anti-smoking propaganda, but it will now also actively seek to dictate what a cigarette can taste like. 

For the children, of course.

Because the health nazis truly believe that your kids are imbeciles, and so are their parents, and only the government under their technocratic advisement can save us all. Am I right?

And for some good news in the battle for common sense down under, just an update on a post I did when I first started this blog about a smoke drift petition in Oz.  In five months, the petition has managed only 15 signatures. I'm pleasantly surprised by that. 

Plain Packs: A How To Demonise Smokers Guide

In June, at the 2012 UK National Smoking Cessation Conference (UKNSCC), Linda Bauld gave a presentation about the "evidence" of plain packaging.  Her presentation centred on the review that she and others in the tobacco control industry gave to the Department of Health in support of the plain packaging consultation here in the UK.

Lest I be accused of taking quotes of context, I would encourage you to listen to the entire presentation here and you can come to your own objective conclusions about it. There is also a low-resolution slide show that you can follow along with.  The audio portion of the presentation is roughly 18 minutes in length.

First of all, Bauld admits there is no real evidence of plain packaging working to reduce smoking uptake or quit rates because it's never been done before.  (Note: The Root of All Evil tweeted the same thing once.)  There are no controlled or before and after studies and the vast majority of studies are surveys, the quality of which are "variable."  That's comforting.

The tobacco control industry's surveys do indicate that plain packs will stigmatise current smokers. The idea here is to weaken and ultimately remove any brand identity a smoker might have, whilst fostering the notion that there are no differences in quality between various brands.  Because to the anti-smoking zealots, all cigarettes are exactly the same.

So if the hate campaign's goal is to demonise and stigmatise smokers further to force them to change their behaviour to the state-sanctioned variety, then they believe that plain packs will likely contribute to that end.  What does Linda Bauld say about this?

• [Plain Packs] seen as having a less desirable smoker identity associated with them. The type of person that might use a plain pack might be older, less popular and less attractive, etc.

Translation: Let's make adult smokers unpopular and ugly by implementing plain packs.

• They felt more embarrassed pulling out the plain packs.

Translation: Let's make our ugly and unpopular smokers feel even more like outcasts in society and amongst their peers and friends.

So, I suppose that's the tobacco control industry's plan and theory: Attack and remove consumer choice to force behavioural change to the nanny state's idealised groupthink model of perfect health and living forever by denormalising human beings, all before tobacco controllers implement outright prohibition of tobacco.

Big Lottery Fund Grants Hard At Work

Back in May of this year, Dick Puddlecote broke the story that ASH Wales received the largest award in Wales from the Big Lottery Fund.  I thought I'd update DP's post and let you know how that £864,881 is being spent. Ready for this?

ASH Wales created two social media accounts on both Facebook and Twitter called "The Filter."  It's mission is to denormalise you to tell the truth.  That's what they say anyway, here on the about page on Facebook. 

We are here to tell people in Wales the truth about tobacco. We are a part of ASH Wales that is funded by Big Lottery.

Before we see how well they tell the truth, particularly the whole truth, some quick maths on the actual costs of this new Big Lottery Fund venture:

Cost of creating a Facebook page:  £0.00  (Free)

Cost of creating a Twitter account:  £0.00  (Free)

Hiring some hateful dolt a Social Media Expert Officer (Word document) under a three-year contract to denormalise smokers and misinform the public to tweet and update facebook for a 37.5 hours per week:  (salary £28,000 to £30,000 per annum) = £84,000 to £90,000 - this is not inclusive of National Insurance contributions and other taxes.

Cost of a new shiny trade marked PC or Mac that that attracts children more than cigarettes ever would and other items required for denormalising smokers on-line:  £1,000 (estimated based on current market prices).

So, not including tax and national insurance payments and everything else an employer must give to our nanny state government, we're looking at about £85,000 to £91,000, roughly about 10% of the grant received.  Kind of makes you wonder where the rest of that money is going.  Doesn't it?  Actually, I really don't want to know...

OK, let's go back to the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  I saw this Twitter conversation the other day.

So here we have a tweet conversation between The Filter and Daniel Clayton that claims a cigarette contains something from a beaver's arse.  The Filter also said it's "morbidly fascinating" but worse than ambergris because "it's smoked." Dickheads.

But is it true? Do cigarettes contain beaver arse juice and what is this beavery-arse substance?

The substance they refer to is called "castoreum."  It is extracted from a beaver's castor sac, which lies in very close proximity to the beaver's anal glands. These are the sacs that beavers use for scent marking. Castoreum doesn't come from the anal glands, and the castor sacs are not actually glands, they are sacs. So, prima facie the tweet is already untrue, but we know that nobody working at ASH is a scientist or biologist, certainly not the dolts they hire for their social media campaigns.  They obviously found a site that called them anal glands incorrectly and ran with it, because that has a greater shock value.

Should we forgive them their error?  No. We should not cut these bastards any slack.  If they claim their mission is to tell the truth, then their statements should be factual.  Of course, we know that ASH has never cared for actual facts, so no surprise here.

Next, do cigarettes contain castoreum?  Well, some brands of cigarettes may contain castoreum. But certainly not all brands of cigarettes; it depends on how the tobacco is cured and treated. So it's not a fair claim to say that every cigarette has castoreum (let alone calling it anal gland juice). Here's what Wired magazine had to say about it:

Castoreum
Commonly found in the secretions of a beaver's castor glands (located near the animal's genitals), this substance when processed gives your cigarette a sweet odor and smoky flavor. In 1991, Phillip Morris used just 8 pounds of the pungent stuff to make 400 billion cigarettes — proving that a little genital secretion goes a long way.

All we know from this is that at the very least, Philip Morris uses castoreum in at least some of their cigarettes.  Which brands?  Who knows...but The Filter wants you to think that all cigarettes contain this, and that's not true.

So, you might be thinking castoreum is gross, and I could understand that.  But wait, there's more to this. The whole truth is that castoreum is used in lots of every day foods, beverages and products out there. You have very likely consumed it. Perhaps often. It is considered a safe food additive, and it is usually called "Natural Flavouring." (It is natural, after all.)  For instance, one might find castoreum in:

Alcoholic and non-alcholic beverages
Candy
Puddings (the American variety of pudding, I imagine)
Gelatines
Vanilla flavourings (ice cream)
Raspberry flavourings

And more... Get the point? Chances are you have eaten beaver secretions at some point in your life. You probably even like it.

Perfumers also use castoreum in their perfumes and colognes. Or it might be added to soaps and shampoos.

And guess who else uses castoreum in their products?  Big Pharma does.  That's right, it's used in medicines and other pharmaceutical products. I have no idea which ones, but wouldn't it be funny if it turned up in NRT gum?  Because castoreum is used in some chewing gums (again, no idea which ones).

Of course, ASH Wales's The Filter won't tell you these things. They put it out there to gross you out, a campaign of hateful misinformation by omission, and they didn't tell you the whole truth. In fact, they embellished it, and not content with misinforming the public the first time around, they feel the need to reiterate it again today.

They know most people are too lazy to look up information for themselves. They know most people will read it and think it's totally true without verifying it for themselves. The tobacco control relies on people's laziness and stupidity and unwillingness to confirm if something is a fact.  "Oh, I heard it from a friend who knows somebody who met this guy who saw it on a website, so it must be true."  That's the level of interest people have in finding out the truth.

But we humans, we're strange creatures. We ingest and consume lots of weird foods and organic substances.  For instance, billions of humans consume this glandular secretion, which contains amino acids, citrate, enzymes, flavins, fructose phosphorylcholine, prostaglandins, vitamin C, acid phosphatase, citric acid, fibrinolysin, proteolytic enzymes, zinc, galactose, mucus, and sialic acid among other things.

What about ... Haggis?  Black Pudding? People love these. It's fucking disgusting to me, but others love it.  Here's a tasty link (warning, click at own risk -- nasty foods): http://www.toptenz.net/top-ten-grossest-foods.php

Here's another list to ten "strange" British foods:  http://www.aquiziam.com/ten-strange-british-foods.html

Not satisfied?  Then try following these links graciously provided for your reading pleasure by Stumpy Bear.  (Warning: Maybe wait until after you've eaten dinner. Your call.)

http://www.revoltingfood.com/2012/06/stir-fried-cicadas.html
http://www.lazyboneuk.com/categories/Edible-Insects-/
http://www.firebox.com/product/1080/Chocolate-Ants
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_Mars_bar


I mean, on this planet, everything is fair game for consumption and or use at some point.  Animal by-products are used for so many useful things -- nothing is ever wasted.  Even torturing single-celled organisms to get their by-products is fair game, and people actually eat it on toast for fuck's sake. Yuck.  Yes, it's Marmite. 

And just to close this post, you do know what goes into medications for athlete's foot. Don't you? It's called urea. Sometimes it's synthetic, sometimes not, but urea is ... urine. That's right. Piss. You can piss on your feet and treat your fungal infection.

Seriously, you can piss on your feet and cure infections (or ease jelly fish stings, I'm told). How awesome is that?

I guess other people's pee will work too (if you're into that sort of thing), but I really don't know...  The point here is that your pee can save you money, and it just might help save the NHS. I can imagine the NHS campaign slogan:

Don't Flush Your Money Down the Toilet. Wee For Our Children's Future.

ASH Wales, however, just takes our money and uses it to misinform people and demonise smokers.  Indeed, the entire tobacco control industry makes their living doing this. Fucking money-flushing pissheads, all of them.

There are much, much worse things than trace amounts of castoreum. Just sayin'.