Allies and Enemies

Yesterday's post about unhelpful vapers may have touched a nerve with a few folk -- check out the full comment thread if you'd like. To be perfectly clear, I do not view vapers as enemies of smokers. I see you as brothers and sisters; allied with smokers in the war against the tyranny of Public Health's New Inquisition, even if you don't. And if you don't see it that way, someday you will -- along with drinkers, chubby people, gamblers, people who work for "Big Anything" and the lot.  Because the control industries of Public Health hate all of you, whilst at the same time seeing you as an endless source of taxpayer funding for their hate campaigns against you. They are all evil bastards.

With that said, the subject of my post yesterday, Jonny Lavery, dropped by with a comment explaining that his quote was taken out of context. I reproduce Jonny's comment here in full:

Why thank you for the coverage Jay. It shouldn't surprise anyone that indeed the quote was taken out of context. It was, in fact a witty explanation of my decision to prefer vaping to smoking. I haven't attacked smokers, as I love smoking, and yet I have a predilection for life, hence my dilemma. I didn't write the piece, you shouldn't be surprised, as the BBC did. The point was and remains to elucidate coverage of our mass protest in Brussels- to protest against the potential waste of life that would be resultant from the actions of this 'nanny state' that you derise.
And so, we find ourselves on much the same platform, except that mine was international news media and yours is a little blog.
I hope we can overcome these differences to support freedom of choice for smokers as that is my agenda.
Best wishes,
JL

According to Jonny, the BBC took his quote of context. He says he meant it as a tongue-in-cheek response as to why he now prefers to be a vaper.  OK, fine. If my "inordinately bad mood" (as DP put it in the comments yesterday) made me fail to see the comment as witty repartee, then I apologise to Jonny.  Sorry, kid. I must have got it wrong -- I do that sometimes, and I'm fine with admitting that when I come to realise it.

I do think that if you're going to be on this grand "international" stage you speak of, Jonny, you will need much better press skills. Because the press is going to "pwn" you every time if you give them opportunity. You have to be more precise and leave no room for misinterpretation or to be misquoted -- not an easy task. Know your talking points, hold to them, do not let them manipulate the interview. Journalists should not be trusted inherently. Never forget that.

First impressions matter; second impressions count. My first impression of Jonny was perhaps wrong due to my bad mood and because of what the BBC article had printed. My second impression of Jonny after he left his comment on my blog, if indeed it really is Jonny, isn't any better to be honest. Because condescending remarks about my "little blog" is not going to win me over, and it certainly doesn't overcome any differences in opinion. It just makes Jonny look like an egotistical dickhead, and honestly, our "related causes" cannot afford assholery like that. His view of blogs or bloggers and our usefulness in the fight against Public Health matters not at all to me. Perhaps he'll change his view over time; perhaps he will not.

To Jonny's credit, at least he is doing something. So good luck with your trip to Brussels, Jonny, and may the force be with you and all that jazz. We are all lucky to have you. Say hi to my fellow blogger Dick Puddlecote when you see him.

* * *

One of our vaping allies is Jan Johnson -- she isn't just pro-vaping, she supports all tobacco users equally and she despises the insidious nanny state that pervades our once-free societies. Jan is incredibly active on social media, tweeting as "J Johnson" (@themorrigan1972), where she regularly tweets/re-tweets all of the "smokey" blog posts as well as linking to them in her Daily Nicotine and Vaper's Daily newspapers.

If you're aren't following Jan on social media, you might consider doing so. She is relentless in tracking down and tweeting every "nicotine-related" and "bans-related" article she can find, for all of our benefit, and many of her finds I've blogged about here.  Jan also can be found on Tumblr here, and her blog on Blogger is here (as well is in my blogroll at right).  She also hosts the "Anti-Nanny" podcast on the Vaper's Place Network, which is broadcast every Monday evening at 6 p.m. EST (11 p.m. GMT).  You can listen to archived episodes on Soundcloud here.  (If you didn't already know, I wrote the "The Root of All Evil" song for Jan's podcast.)  Jan is not only our ally, I consider her to be my friend.

Vapingpoint Liz also commented on my post yesterday, and she blogged about it here.

Some [vapers] believe they are better than smokers, and that vaping is something different - but is it?. Vaping is NRT some think. But it is pleasing and delightful to do - not like NRT at all.

The difference between my attitude and those vapers who are trying to save their necks by clambering up the pyramid of suffering smokers, putting their feet in the mouths and ears of the already persecuted, is that they do not want the same thing as happened to smokers to happen to us. It's a kind of panic. So they use the anti-smoking rhetoric as a way of making us vapers look better than smokers. And also to sell their products! It is truly sad. But I understand why it is happening.

The shame of it is, that what we do is considered smoking and our lot will be the same as that from which we thought we'd escaped. We should also be fighting for relaxations in the smoking ban and removing medical porn nocebos on cigarette packaging. We should be on the side of smokers, not against them.

The other comments left on my blog post yesterday are also worth reading. So please do so if you haven't already.

What we have in spades are enemies. Far too numerous to list them all (though in respect of the UK I gave it the ol' college try here).  The short list is as follows:

• Public Health control industries (Tobacco Control, Alcohol Control, Food Snobs, et al.)
• Pressure groups, organisations and other rather uncharitable "charities" who seek to denormalise smokers
• The mainstream media
• Many of our democratically-elected tyrants (politicians)
• Activist doctors
• Academics
• Big Pharma

That list is not all-inclusive, and is presented in no particular order.

Perhaps we are our own worst enemy. If smokers and the rest of the people that Public Health despises and seeks to control are unable to unite and stick together in this fight against these despicable nannying tyrants, then what chance do we have of prevailing? We cannot afford in-fighting amongst ourselves -- we cannot afford to be divided nor segregated. That isn't to say we must agree on every last thing -- we certainly should not. The soundest decisions are made after robust debates, where the pros and cons are weighed up and analysed fully, where all views are listened to and given due consideration and the best course of action to meet our goals is subsequently chosen.

We either accept all of our differences and try to tolerate them and focus on our common enemies, or we fail. There is no other option in my opinion. So in the spirit of tolerance, perhaps we can afford a bit of assholery on our side, but I'd prefer that we avoid it if we can.

RESIST.

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.]

Time to Complain About the BBC Propaganda Wing

Unsurprisingly, the BBC has run afoul of "Jay's Law" this week.  In case you forgot, Jay's Law states:

Any person, group, organisation or government that uses children to promote and disseminate propaganda designed to encourage societal and/or legislative change for any agenda or cause, regardless of claimed benefits or their intent, shall be considered execrable, evil and tyrannical.

In an article on the CBBC Newsround web site, titled "Does it bother you when adults smoke around you?" and dated Tuesday, 4 June 2013, we see that the BBC is wilfully using children to promote an anti-smoker / anti-adult agenda.

Let's inspect the introductory text, reproduced in full*:

A government advertising campaign is being re-launched to remind people of the dangers of second-hand smoke.

When someone has a cigarette they inhale smoke - but this smoke is also breathed in by everyone else around them - and this is called passive smoking.

Medical research suggests the effects of passive smoking on children cost the NHS £23m a year.

It leads to 300,000 doctor visits and 9,500 hospital admissions annually and can cause breathing-related problems and other illnesses.

Public Health England - the government body responsible for encouraging healthy lifestyles - found that three-quarters of smoking parents were shocked by the statistics.

We asked you whether it bothers you when adults smoke around you. 

Do you worry about the effects on your health? Or do you think it's not a problem?

This chat page has now closed but you can read a selection of your comments below

The full chat page does not seem to be available by the way. That's important,  because now we need to look at the comments the BBC reproduced:

"It annoys me when adults smoke because when I take my little sister to the park there are always adults smoking near it. I try to run past them so I don't have to breath it in."

Leah, Surrey, England

"My next door neighbour smokes and his wife only allows him to smoke outside in his garden. As my bedroom is overlooking his garden whenever I open my window I only get the smell of smoke and not fresh air because he is outside all of the time. I am never going to smoke because of this annoying experience."

Isabel, London, England

"It really bothers me when people nearby smoke because I have asthma so I'm scared it might affect my health. When someone is smoking nearby, I hold my breath and walk as a fast as possible to get away from them."

Kaoutar, Manchester, England

"I hate it when people smoke around me. It's just a dirty and horrible habit and it should make smokers feel dirty and smelly."

Beth, Stoke, England

"It's extremely bad and can cause loads of diseases and can be bad for the environment as it is made of poisons and also it is bad for the smoker. I feel really sorry for smokers."

Jason, Lewisham, England

"Smoking is an unpleasant thing to do. I usually hold my breath while I walk past someone who's smoking."

Hannah, Powys, Wales

"Smoking should be banned for ever and ever! My dad disappears into the garage to have, about 15 cigs a day. I don't like it. I hate people SMOKING!"

Emma, Gloucester, England

"It really annoys me when people smoke because it can damage their health and others as well."

Emma, London, England

"I think smoking is terrible and should be banned as it is dangerous not just to the smoker but to everyone surrounding them."

Cat, England

"I find it really annoying when you're trying to walk and adults just smoke in front of you as it really smells and it goes in your face."

Nadia, London, England

"When I am out and there are people are smoking it bothers me a lot! I hate the smell and when it blows onto me I feel like it clings to me! It's horrible."

Genna, Swindon, England

"You shouldn't smoke when children are around you, you could be affecting their lungs and future life!"

Hannah, Manchester, England

"There is a ban on smoking in public places but what constitutes a public place? Surely not just restaurants, pubs, transport. What could be more public than walking on the pavement? Smoking stinks, is really antisocial, the streets are filthy with butts and as an asthma sufferer it literally makes me sick. Kill smoking, not those passing by."

Sue, London, England

"I hate it when people smoke in front of me and then chuck the butts on the floor for people to tread on!"

Lydia, England 

"It's ok when they smoke outside but when they smoke inside it's bad for the people who are around them because they breathe it in and also they make the house smell."

Clairmond, Essex, England

"I hate to breathe it in it makes me cough and feel sick. It gives children the idea to smoke so stop smoking it is bad for you and your surroundings. It is bad bad bad."

Charlie, Dagenham, England

"I hate when my mum smokes and I try telling her to stop but she doesn't listen to me. I don't like how it smells or what it does to your lungs. I think the factories should stop making cigarettes and shops to stop selling them."

Cristi, Morecambe, England

"Yes it bothers me, I have to hold my breath until I can't smell it."

Madeline, London, England

"I think it is bad because it can do harm to your body and when someone is smoking I just try to hold my breath."

Marley, Herts, England

"I don't mind smoking. Some of my friends smoke at school and I hang around with them, but I know that I could never smoke."

Oliver, Reading, England

"I'm glad that my parents don't smoke because if you breathe in smoke from cigarettes it's just as bad as actually smoking!"

Sally, Manchester, England

"It really stinks and always makes me cough. Smoking should be banned there is no positive from it except it makes money but that is a selfish reason. Also it costs the NHS money to treat diseases that were caused by smoking!!!"

Grace, London, England

''It annoys me when my dad smokes with me when we watch films and sometimes in the car.''

Lily, Surrey, England

"I cant stand it! I don't know why anyone would want to smoke!"

Emily, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

"Smoking stinks, it smells and it damages your body. Why do adults do it? Especially when kids are around. When someone is smoking near me I always try not to breathe it in. I don't get what is so appealing about smoking."

Charlie, Leighton Buzzard, England

"I think that smoking is terrible. You shouldn't smoke around children because they could get the wrong impression."

Laura, Kent, England

"When I pass someone who is smoking I have to hold my breath and that annoys me because if I don't I get a breath full of smoke and I feel like I'm choking."

Holly, London, England

"It bothers me because when my mum smokes I breathe it in which causes me to cough. I think more measures should be put in places where you can and cannot smoke."

Stephanie, Norfolk, England

"I don't mind because if your parents, like my dad, smoke outside it doesn't bother anyone."

Emily, London, England

"It does bother me because it smells really bad and if people are near you when they're smoking you can't help breathing it in."

Amy, Norwich, England

"Yes, it does. It is bad for their health and children around them. It smells horrible!"

Tom, Hove, England

"It bothers me when I go to the park and there are lots of adults smoking. I try to walk faster to get past it quicker."

Libby, Birmingham, England

What's missing?  Well, balance for one thing. It may be entirely possible that not one child said smoking didn't bother him or her.  Most young kids, the age group likely to be reading the CBBC site, are naturally anti-smoking.  That's why tobacco control LOVES to use kids to disseminate anti-smoking propaganda or as little khaki-shirt wearing activists with placards. The kids are already primed to be anti-smoking minions, and these kids truly believe they're doing the right thing.  When I was between 7 and 11-years-old, I used to try to convince adults to quit smoking. They didn't.  I gave up trying around 12-years-old or so.  But that's neither here nor there.

The problem is that the BBC has not presented any other viewpoints. All of the comments are negative against smoking.  The problem is that the BBC is using children to promote an anti-smoker agenda.  Do note, not an anti-smoking agenda, but an anti-smoker / anti-adult agenda.  The problem is that the BBC is supposed to be fair and impartial.  It is clearly not being impartial here.  The problem is that we pay a licence fee to the BBC, whether we want to or not, but we don't pay the fee so that the BBC can attack adult smokers on a children's web site.

The BBC is entirely out-of-line for this article.  So I'm asking you to complain. We will start first with the BBC itself. I do not expect anything to come of it, because in the past the BBC has rubbished any similar complaint. But at the same time, maybe we can make something happen -- perhaps if enough complaints are received something might happen. We won't know unless we try.

You can complain here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complain-online/

The page link to complain about is here:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/22763719

And if we get no satisfaction, then we'll escalate the complaints to other agencies.

But we cannot let this egregious abuse -- this violation and invocation of Jay's Law -- to stand. So I'm asking you to complain, please.  If you can be bothered.**

* * * * *

*I have decided to reproduce the entire text of the page for several reasons. One, it's vital to show the entire post and all of the comments in full to understand the issue completely. Two, the BBC derives a vast percentage of its income from us in the form of the TV licence fee -- therefore, although we don't own the content the BBC produces, we certainly paid for it. And as such, we should have a right to reproduce the content for the purposes of criticism, which is what this post is all about.  And three, the BBC should not be promoting anything using children, let alone hateful, evil anti-smoker propaganda. 

**You probably aren't bothered... I know that -- I've been doing this long enough to know that you'll just move on to the next blog post and forget about this ... but it's worth a shot. Someday I'll be proved wrong. If you have a blog, maybe you could write about it instead. Anything is better than doing nothing at all.

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.

Back in Black

Just about everybody knows by now that the UK is not planning to proceed with plain packaging (or standardised packs, as the anti-smokers are now calling them) for tobacco products.  And while it looks we've finally had some success after over a decade of being denormalised and tortured by public health zealots, I'm not holding my breath that this is the end of it. It is possible, perhaps you could say very likely, that plain packs will be mandated through back door EU legislation at some point in the future.  But for now, I'm pleased to say that it appears, as of today anyway, that common sense has prevailed for once.

Naturally, the anti-smoker rhetoric from the True Believers on Twitter has reached hyper-hysterical proportions. You know it's bad for the anti-smokers when they tweet to random celebrities, who were never part of a conversation on Twitter, in a sad, desperate attempt to find someone -- anyone -- famous to support their cause. Like this one from Nick Hopkinson (@COPDdoc) trying to drag Owen Jones into the plain packaging debate:

Twitter

If the name Nick Hopkinson sounds familiar, he's that ... er... annoying twat? ... hopeless lunatic? ... let's just say "that guy" who incessantly tweets about Tesco's tobacco displays.  I admit that I had great fun winding him up with the following petty tweet on Twitter yesterday:

Twitter

Well, I don't really want to spend more time writing about anti-smoker morons on Twitter.  No, there's something far more serious to blog about.

I would like to tell you a story.

This is a story about deception, about lies through omission, about mainstream media propaganda, and at the heart of this torrid tale both the evil villains known as The Dreadful, and her faithful minion, the Department of Health's Tobacco Programme Manager, Mr Andrew Black.

Without further ado, let us don our tin-foil hats and travel Back in Black.

Back in Black

A Tale of Deception

by Jay

Once upon a time there was a journalist named Sam Masters who wrote an article for The Independent.  He titled this shabby piece of anti-smoker propaganda "Tobacco lobby told Government: branding ban will cost you millions."  The article Sam Masters wrote began with:

"Department of Health civil servants met lobbyists from the cigarette manufacturer Imperial Tobacco before the Government shelved proposals to introduce plain packaging laws this week, it can be revealed."

The journalist's use of the word "lobbyists" to describe two representatives from Imperial Tobacco was an inaccuracy. One might be tempted to say it was a bald-faced lie. But let us not quibble over semantics, for we only need to read a bit more of the article to understand why journalist Sam Masters used the term lobbyists instead of representatives.  

From a top-floor office in Hatton Garden in central London, the headquarters of the New Inquisition in England, the evil queen of propaganda known colloquially as The Dreadful opened her gob, revealing her dangerous, pointy fangs, and let out the most horrible, ear-piercing scream anyone in the world had ever heard. Children up to fifty miles away suffered The Dreadful's wails and cried for help, but there was no help to give. Some have said that The Dreadful's scream caused several signal failures on the Tube's Central Line, and chalk cliffs to crumble and fall into the sea on the Jurassic coast in Dorset, but these claims cannot be substantiated. And when the scream finally died out, The Dreadful, still hysterical and drenched with her venomous spittle, said, "The tobacco industry clearly tried to use this meeting with officials to lobby against standard packaging rather than provide any hard evidence."

This was also inaccurate.  Yet hardly surprising, for no person can remember the last time The Dreadful spoke the truth.  Indeed, it was always The Dreadful's job to lie or distort the truth to support her wicked agenda of denormalisation.

An artist's stylised depiction of The Dreadful, presumably in happier days

The truth was that The Dreadful's minion, who is a friend of fellow Australian, The Root of All Evil, had invited the representatives of Imperial to his lair at Wellington House near Waterloo Station. Because The Dreadful's minion, Andrew Black, had to do this as part of the Impact Assessment of the so-called public consultation on plain packaging of tobacco products, a process by which everyone knew was always designed to destroy tobacco companies' ability to distinguish their brands from their competitors' brands.  So to see the truth, one must be willing to look at the actual freedom of information release:

How strange that journalist Sam Masters failed to mention this information. Stranger still is this anonymous minister's quote in Sam Master's propaganda piece:

"[a] minister familiar with the consultation process, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Independent: “My concern is that the tobacco companies have inveigled their way into persuading a number of important players to reject standardised packaging.”

Which minister said that and why would he or she choose to be anonymous?  This was suspicious. Some had claimed that it came from a member of a secretive cabal hell-bent on eradicating a quarter of the British population, a nasty and vile group called the APPG on Smoking on Health. Alas, no evidence was to be found that the quote did come from that cabal.

And even stranger than all of what has already been written is the Department of Health's decision to once again selectively release a sole freedom of information request ("FOI") when almost all other FOIs are not published on-line and kept hidden from the public's view, unless a brave warrior knows the precise magic words and means to release the FOI from the Department of Health's information repository.

There can be only one reason for the Department of Health to do this (we can never know if Andrew Black is responsible, however, but it does seem possible):

To deceive the public with false propaganda.

But it came too late. Because good people like you thwarted the anti-smokers' New Inquisition by writing to your MPs and telling them to oppose plain packs. You and countless others won the battles on Facebook and Twitter, too! You are heroes, all of you. Yes, you, dear readers! Your herculean efforts foiled the New Inquisition's dastardly plans for control and domination. The world is a safer place. The world thanks you.

And so the Dreadful and her minions have lost the war for plain packaging and they have grown most desperate. Everything that the New Inquisition will spew forth now and in the future will be woeful pleas and hateful deceptions designed to fool the unwary and unthinking.

Beware! Beware all Britons! Beware world! These are dark, Black days and you must remain vigilant. The Dreadful and her sheep-minions from hell will stop at nothing to make you believe in their fairy tales and sorrowful conspiracy theories. Armed with brainwashing ray guns, they will use slogans obtained from the darkest pits of the anti-smoker underworld that say "Put Our Kids First" and "Put Kids First," which are designed to make you feel, not think.  Do not be fooled by these powerful deceptions. Know that only the evillest of all evil beings will invoke the "protect the children" incantations to sway opinion.

There is nothing to fear, however. In the fullness of time, in a more enlightened era, it will come to pass that the world will not look kindly upon The Dreadful and Andrew Black and the others who belong to the New Inquisition. These evil creatures who believe in censorship, bans and prohibition, and those who give them quarter will be despised for all eternity.

And the world will once again be a happy place full of sunshine and bunnies, with freedom and civil liberties for all.

The End

Update (Sunday, 5 May 2013):  Simon Clark also writes about the Independent article here.  I wonder if he saw the above?  And the Guardian also covers the story with another nasty quote from The Dreadful:

"It looks as if the noxious mix of rightwing Australian populism, as represented by Crosby and his lobbying firm, and English saloon bar reactionaries, as embodied by [Nigel] Farage and Ukip, may succeed in preventing this government from proceeding with standardised cigarette packs, despite their popularity with the public."

Translation:  Toys. Thrown. From. Pram.

January - A Time for Prohibitionist Propaganda

Nearly all of this BBC Magazine article written by Tom de Castella and titled "Alcohol-free January: Where can you go to avoid people drinking?" pisses me off.  I read it yesterday afternoon, and tried to avoid thinking about it, but then later I saw it was the eighth-most read article as of 11:30 p.m. last night (14 Jan 2013) and I couldn't ignore it any longer.

Where to start? How about the beginning: 

 January is a time for sobriety.

Says fucking who? January is merely the first month of the year. That's it. Wikipedia fails to mention anything about January being a time for sobriety. So does everywhere else. If anything, January is the month when New Year's resolutions are broken in spades.  I've never made a New Year's resolution, by the way.  It's not that I'm afraid of failing; it's more to do with whenever I decide to do or change something, I don't feel this daft need to wait until the beginning of the next year to do it. I'll do it immediately, or maybe the next day if I feel like procrastinating. A week tops.

Next:

It's the only time of year in the UK when a lot of people bond over not drinking.

No it isn't.  Ever hear of Alcoholics Anonymous? They do it year-round. Although membership statistics are hard to discern, the Plymouth AA site estimates about 40,000 UK members. That's "a lot" of people, who are bonding over not drinking.

Oh, this is a good one:

Those responding to campaigns like this can face a tricky month. Nobody wants to avoid socialising for a whole month, but with the British mania for social lubrication it's hard to avoid temptation.

OK, who ever said you have to avoid socialising in order to be sober?  And "British mania for social lubrication"? That makes it sound like every last one of us belongs in AA.  This is confusing the "traditional" pint with mates with mania -- and that's asinine.

Occasions that seem to have no particular connection to drinking are still alcohol-laden occasions in British society. Sport's associated with health, but how many people gather for a game of five-a-side football and hit the bar immediately afterwards?

Big deal. So do a lot professional athletes after a game.  Yet people aren't drinking whilst they're playing sports ... most of them, anyway.  Is it a fucking crime to have a pint or two after a match?  Perhaps a little something to help ease the pain of being kicked in shins for an hour? C'mon, give the people a break.

Five-a-side centres typically have a bar to cater for this desire and Carling launched a 2% beer for the post-football drinkers.

Sounds like a good business plan to me -- why let potential customers take their business elsewhere? And, oh my god, a 2% Carling for the post-football drinkers!  Ooh, those clever Big Alcohol people targeting the vulnerable post-football drinkers. That'll be their undoing, certainly.

In the "What you reading fer?" category: 

Book club usually means drinking. Many base themselves in pubs and even a Sunday lunchtime meeting can still mean endless glasses of cheap white wine.

I did not know that book clubs gather in pubs or that they were "alcohol-laden" events. Those that do gather in a pub probably do so because the pub is the traditional meeting place in most villages, towns and cities (again, excepting smokers these days).  It's been that way for centuries.  But this: "Endless glasses of cheap white wine."  Really?  Are you certain that "endless" is not a bit of an exaggeration, Tom?  Endless?  Fuck me. Endless. Who knew?

It's possible to turn a drink down, especially if you have religious dispensation. But for everyone else, eyebrows may be raised if one is not driving, pregnant, or on antibiotics.

Oh, noes! Not the raised eyebrows! How could anyone ever show their face in public again after being subjected to a raised eyebrow. Mortified, they'll likely hang themselves and make the news. There is almost a hint of conspiracy there, too.  It's all a sinister plot to get you to have a drink. Everyone else is drinking. If you don't, then you're not one of us, you're one of them.  It's all very Body Snatchers.

Indeed:

There's a rounds culture once you get there. You are buying into the collective.Anyone abstaining is sending a message to the group. "If someone opts out from the group it's almost like a rejection," says social anthropologist Kate Fox, author of Watching the English. "Others will get drunk and silly and the one opting out will look on a bit pious and disapproving." 

Well, there is that.  Of course, you can still buy a round for your mates even if you're on the tonic water with lime.  In fact, if you're worried about how others might perceive your abstinence, you can fib and tell them that your drink is a double gin and tonic.

So what can the alcohol abstainer do without becoming a hermit? Lobby group Drink Aware suggests karaoke [...]

Heh. You could, but do you really want to? The only time I ever did karaoke was in 1991, in Japan, and we were all absolutely thrashed, which I understand is the preferred Japanese method.  I think most people only ever attempt karaoke after a few drinks, because that's when you feel like a rock star the most.

While we're on the topic of suggested things to do whilst sober, these gems appeared in the BBC article in the sidebar:

• Ride around on London Underground, where alcohol has been banned since June 2008

Are you fucking kidding me?  Ride around on the Tube. We only take the Tube when we have to take the Tube. Why the hell would we willingly subject ourselves to being sardined with a bunch of people who have just come from the pub?  Think this one through, BBC.  Think it through...

• Visit Fitzpatrick's in Rawtenstall, Lancashire, UK's last temperance bar, serving wide range of cordials

There's a reason why it's the last temperance bar in the UK.  I'll give you one guess.

• Rave at Breakin' Out in Wales, alcohol-free music festival (2012 headliners included Tinchy Stryder)

To begin, let's set aside that it's in Wales (and why am I not surprised at all by that?). Let's also avoid asking the question: who the fuck is Tinchy Stryder? (Sorry. I asked it anyway.) And this is the real important bit, it happened last fucking year, in September!  Ain't nothing planned for this year yet, certainly not in January, when "a lot of people" want to bond over not drinking, apparently. Way to be timely, BBC and Tom.

The BBC's idea of a good time? Jeez.

There's plenty more in the article to sneer at, but I've covered enough.

It comes down to this: If you don't want to drink on a night out, then don't. You don't have to be pregnant or on antibiotics to say no thanks. You don't need to make excuses.  The only person you need to answer to is yourself.  Articles like the above from the BBC often reinforce the warped agenda of the prohibitionists, that you are all victims and helpless addicts, unable to take control of your life, or that there is something inherently wrong about the British way of life and you.

It's sad that there are those who seek to destroy British culture and traditions in the name of paternalism and socialism.  They want you to feel ashamed for who you are and the things you choose to do.  But you don't need to feel ashamed because you want to have a pint (or "endless glasses of cheap white wine") and a fag. Before the smoking ban, the heart of almost all communities was the pub and it was a natural place to meet up even if you were going somewhere else. The anti-smokers ripped out that heart and stamped on it.  Now some of the same people have moved on to alcohol control. And they won't be satisfied until every last one of us is forced to conform and adhere to their beliefs.

I don't believe that Britain has a drinking problem. The one problem we do have is that we lack the national will to once again round up all of the puritans, march them up the gangway, hoist anchor and ship them off to another country where they can torment each other with their misguided religious beliefs and leave us in peace to live out our lives as we see fit.

Maybe history will repeat itself...  one can only hope... for really rough seas... and a bit of scurvy, too.

UPDATE:  I've just seen that Frank Davis also wrote about this article, which you can read here.  It gave him the creeps, too.

Octabber Starts Today

A few weeks back I wrote about this month's #Octabber campaign here and said:

We'll  be tweeting the hashtag #octabber throughout the month of October.  No doubt some twat will say we're encouraging children and women to smoke (keeping in mind that the tobacco control industry typically disregards men as victims of big tobacco subliminal marketing campaigns).  We aren't doing that. We're just saying we're not going to quit.

So, I was partially correct.  Via Simon Clark at Taking Liberties, we learn that the Mancunian Matters web site has ill-informed its readers about #Octabber:

"A rival campaign called ‘Octabber’ has been set up which encourages people to smoke though Mr Clark was keen to make clear he did not endorse the campaign at all."

Octabber isn't about encouraging anyone to smoke.  It is for those who aren't going to quit smoking this month despite a 28-day long campaign of anti-smoker propaganda aimed right at them.

Feel free to drop by the Octabber Facebook page* and join the conversation.

*while the page is still up, because the nannying tyrants might complain about it. Hopefully that doesn't happen.

Cause and Effect of Tobacco Control

Two separate news articles in Oz say two different things. All by themselves, they're interesting. Put the two together and...

OK, the question I have is:  Could these two articles possibly be related?

The first article on the news.com.au website is "Tobacco tax revenue falls by $341m":

THE federal government says its anti-smoking measures are likely the reason for a $341 million fall in tobacco excise in the last few months of the last financial year.

[...]

"The government's [anti-tobacco] campaign is the right thing to do and it may well be having an effect."

And what might that effect be?  I really couldn't say...

Jump to this article by the Herald Sun, "Tobacco gangs cash in":

Viewed as a high-return, low-risk alternative to hard drugs, bootleggers are using shipping containers and airline crews to smuggle packaged and loose tobacco. Customs documents released under Freedom of Information have labelled it "an issue of growing significance".

So, what does the tobacco industry make of all of this?

Well it seems that they, and the Australian government, think they're doing good. And they would, wouldn't they?  Naturally, the Root of All Evil, Simon Chapman, who inadvertently alerted me to the first article, tweeted thusly in a misguided effort to spin the news.com.au article into the tobacco control industry's favour:

Well, if we're being honest here, of course the government isn't necessarily wedded to tobacco duty.  If duty decreases in one place, the government (eternally short of funds) will increase duty elsewhere.  Like alcohol, for instance.

Anyhow, the first article conveniently glosses over the whole illicit and counterfeit market problem in Australia, which Chapman, bless him, must myopically believe does not exist because Australia shares no borders with any other country, and assumes that the tax revenue is down due to fewer people smoking.

Perhaps the real truth (not the tobacco control industry's or the government's idea of truth) is that more Australians are seeking out the illicit market.  Mayhaps?  Me thinks it are so.

And honestly, why wouldn't they?

Seeing only what the Australian Government wants you to see requires a set of these babies

H/T: J Johnson

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.

We, Bloggers

If you were wondering why I haven't posted anything since Sunday, it is because I haven't needed to do so. My blog traffic has been off the charts these past few days (comparably to what I usually get), with the intimidation tactics post's hits now greatly exceeding any other post on this blog.  So huge thanks and kudos to all of those who have linked to this blog lately.  But the main reason I haven't posted is because everyone else has been really active over this bank holiday weekend, and I have been preoccupied with reading those posts on the latest attempts by Big Tobacco Control to smear individuals rather than the tobacco industry.

Pat Nurse writes about why she distrusts Big TC here:

This is why I don't trust Tobacco Control nor believe they are working for the greater good. No such illustration of violence is justified especially when there are Smokerphobic nutters out there who could be incited to violence because of this irresponsible [video] campaign.

Leg-Iron has been covering it, too:

Could it be, just maybe, perhaps, that the Mail has realised that we smokers are long past the stage where we have had enough? That we are not going to sit back and take it any more? Did they see, at last, that we have not attacked anyone but have been consistently and increasingly attacked, verbally and physically, with the full encouragement of all those who now claim we are threatening them? With Government approval, people have openly despised us and even attacked us for no other reason than we have a little bit of leaf wrapped in paper.

Handymanphil, over at the Simple Simon Says.....! blog writes:

Yes [bloggers] have been accused of harassing health experts but I don't see where any death threats have been issued-and that is because there haven't been any death threats issued to any one person. I must point out here that this is exactly what tobacco control activists are excellent at-media control. They twist wordage to suit whatever situation they feel they need to control and this is a classic situation.

The inimitable Mr Dick Puddlecote (who is evidently not on the Companies House register) has this to say:

I really couldn't give a monkey's chuff if the University of Bath want to waste their time on wiki adventures which attack free speech with their own cash (or CRUK's), after all it's the kind of thing we have come to expect from these charlatans. However, I'm deeply offended that Smokefree South West - a government-funded organisation who are helping to pay for this nonsense - are spending my substantial taxes on something so pathetically shoddy.

Dave Atherton delves a little deeper into the tobacco tactics wiki:

So we have taxpayer’s money being spent on foreign detective agencies to spy on people who are pro-choice on smoking and anti tobacco control. I think at the very least the public should know how much money is being paid to host this site.

Trooper Thompson at Englands Freedom, Souldiers Rights writes:

But we know, dear readers, who the real extremists are, and where that divide should be demarked - between the vile, insane, puritanical, control-freak nannies from hell of the anti-smoking lobby and most of the rest of the people, who, whether they smoke or not, understand that it is a matter for the individual in a free society.

Frank Davis postulates that the dark side of the Force is responsible for Big TC's latest smear campaign against him and other bloggers :

I guess I’m not too surprised that Tobacco Control were going to do something, sooner or later, about the rising number of pro-smoking blogs like mine. We’ve been multiplying unopposed for a long time. TC was going to have to do something. And now the Empire is Striking Back.

Mark Wadsworth rechristens the tobacco tactics wiki as "The Naughty List" and he offers this gentle reminder:

And may I remind people that doing propaganda against its own citizens is not really something that governments should be doing?

Never one to mince words, Longrider defends our use of intemperate language:

And, yes, they are Nazis. Intemperate language may seem extreme, but is necessary when describing people who have consistently used the tactics of untermensch in attempting to further their cause. This is the result of their behaviour –  this is what they have encouraged. How dare they now complain when people point out the truth –  that they are Nazis. How dare they complain when people merely use their methods to argue against them. They and they alone are responsible for this evil.

Belinda over at Freedom-2-Choose (Scotland) is a little surprised after reading the tobacco tactics wiki's entry on smear campaigns:

I was surprised to read about it as a tactic of the tobacco industry, because it was my impression that tobacco control uses this tactic frequently on us – that is, on what is called by everyone outside tobacco control the 'pro-choice' side – by claiming that we are in the pay of tobacco companies or simply pursue their interests because we have no specific view of our own.

That's probably enough quotes for now. I apologise for leaving out others' posts -- it isn't deliberate.  It's only that this post is large enough I think.  Feel free to link to your own blog posts in the comments. 

One final item of business.  The Daily Mail has also published an article about us wee bloggers intimidating the intimidators.  I left a comment on the article, but no idea if they'll get around to publishing it.  If not, this is what I wrote:

Although not mentioned in the above article, I am one of the bloggers who fights against the tyrannical and hateful tobacco control campaign.  My blog has never threatened anyone, has never encouraged violence against anyone, nor has it remotely suggested that others should harass or attack anyone in tobacco control.  I do not contact anyone in tobacco control, nor do I recommend that anyone should.  I merely comment on their publicly-made statements and reports.  Contrariwise, we bloggers have been subject to actual threats and violence both online and in public.  I have personally been attacked and assaulted by rabid anti-smokers on the street.  We are constantly harassed by the likes of Simon Chapman -- you need only to view his history on Twitter to see how he harasses those who do not agree with his campaign of hate against smokers.  It is funny and sad that people like Arnott all of a sudden claim to be victims, when in reality they are the ones victimising us.

Big Tobacco Control's Intimidation Tactics

So, the Guardian's piece on bloggers intimidating tobacco control is out and it is blinder!  Written by Denis Campbell and "special correspondent" James Meikle, this is the first attempt to silence the bloggers who disagree with tobacco control policies.  Make no mistake about the article's intent -- it is designed to intimidate the bloggers.  Dick, Pat, and Frank have already written about it, and those links are scattered below.

There is no evidence that these two authors of this Guardian hack piece are in collusion with the Root of All Evil and the other tobacco control fanatics mentioned in the article, despite that it looks exactly that way.  I mean, look how quickly Simon Chapman retweeted the article to his sheep minions of hate. This image was grabbed at 11:30 p.m. GMT, just a few short hours after the article published while he slept.

 

I checked his Twitter "mentions," nobody tweeted it to him. How could he have found out so fast?  So maybe he has a search set up for "Pro-smoking activists" or "threaten" or "health campaigners," but I doubt it.  No, somebody told him, or perhaps he was expecting it.  Anyone in tobacco control could have alerted the Root of All Evil. It could have been anyone mentioned in the article. But it is most suspicious... Oh, well, I can't prove anything here so I cannot say that it happened.

What I can tell you is that, in my opinion, both authors are a fucking disgrace to the field of journalism. They failed to fully research the article. This was not a fair and unbiased article. They didn't provide any instances of smokerphobia as Pat Nurse calls it, and no instances of the hate that tobacco control advocates espouse towards smokers.  We smokers and bloggers are more likely to be attacked than anyone in tobacco control.  Indeed, there is no instance of anyone attacking someone in tobacco control, because we aren't evil bastards. There are plenty of instances of us being attacked online and in real life.  The authors also failed to contact Dick Puddlecote for context on what they quoted, nor did they contact Frank Davis. The authors truly should have contacted both of them. For some reason, they contacted Simon Clark, who didn't write any of the comments.  Naturally it was quite easy to get quotes from Dreadful or Bauld or Williams, all of them champions of tobacco control's hateful lies. 

So it looks to me as if the Guardian is complicit in following the WHO's new playbook:  Lie if you have to. Make shit up. Get the press involved.  Say you're being harassed and intimidated by words on a screen. Take things out of context. Link anyone who disagrees with tobacco control as being paid by Big Tobacco to do it.   It's bullshit.  And the Guardian fell for it obviously, because there is no evidence at all that they are in collusion with Big Tobacco Control's campaign of hate against free-thinking people. And because of this article, because you failed to be proper journalists, we now have people calling for "police action" on Twitter.  How long before the police do come knocking on our doors over the misrepresentations made in your article?

This is a bald-faced lie. Nobody has threatened anyone. But now you see what all of us are up against, how tobacco control and their supporters work.  If you ever had any doubt that this is a hate campaign against smokers, please stop doubting now.

Oh, but it gets better.  Linda Bauld of Bath University along with Eveline Lubbers and Andrew Rowell have created a wiki on almost everyone who has ever spoken out against them or tobacco control policies. It's priceless, to be honest.  It's a "Look how awful Linda, Deborah and Simon have been treated" site. Good for a laugh, particularly Dick's entry on the site.  But who funded this wiki project.  Let me show you:

Click to enlarge image

That's right.  Cancer Research UK and Smokefree SouthWest funded these haters! Can you believe that?  A government institution, the NHS, is funding this wiki.  So in fact the government is actually trying to out the pro-choice bloggers, trying to intimidate them.  Now, let us read these few lines at the disclaimer page on the wiki:

The making of TobaccoTactics was funded by by Cancer Research UK Limited and Smokefree South West. These funders have had no input into the research or its conclusions. They are not responsible for any content on or the publication of the wiki, and they do not necessarily endorse any of it.

Although we work to rigorous standards and adhere to a strict guide to writing, there is no undertaking by either TobaccoTactics.org or the University of Bath that any part of this site is accurate, complete or up to date. You use this site at your own risk, and for guidance only.  

None of the authors, contributors, sponsors, administrators, sysops, or anyone else connected with TobaccoTactics.org or the University of Bath will be responsible for the appearance of any material considered defamatory, offensive, inaccurate, unlawful or misleading, nor will they be responsible for your use of the information contained in these web pages, or the pages TobaccoTactics links to.

TobaccoTactics retains the right to invite and accept contributing editors at its discretion. All contributors must first register with Tobacco Tactics and sign the Terms of Use that can be found at the Team of Editors page. Those interested in contributing in this way can contact the editors by email, to: [redacted - because they'd probably think I was harassing them if I published their e-mail address, but I would have redacted it anyway.]

Sorry guys, it doesn't work that way. You are indeed responsible for any content you create.  Are you somehow above defamation and libel law just because you say you are not responsible?  Disclaimers like the above do not count in the legal world.  So expect to get sued, haters.  But of course you thought of that, too, didn't you?  A quick check on the registrant of the domain tobaccotactics.org shows that it is registered by a Dutch organisation, Stichting Res Publica which appears to be part of  Buro Jansen & Janssen.  Who are they?  Below is a translated version version of the Wikipedia article on them:

Click to enlarge image

It reads (keep in mind that it's Google translated, but note the linked name):

Buro Jansen & Janssen is a research company that police and intelligence agencies as the BVD (now the AIVD ) critically follows.
 
The agency in 1984 by Eveline Lubbers and Peter Klerk established. The name of the agency is derived from two clumsy detectives in the Tintin - comics . The squatters' movement and other activist groups were then increasingly confronted with the investigation by police and intelligence services. Jansen & Janssen began as a reaction against the collection of counter-information. During the nineties, the research firm shifted more towards controversial issues in general.
 
The agency has different activities, such as publishing on the extension of powers of the police through a collective journalists . There is also a support group for people who have run against an investigation and a reference point for politicians, journalists and other researchers.

Here's the domain check:

Wow! It really does look like Bath University and other tobacco control advocates hired a foreign hitman security research firm. Nice going.  Because the site is registered to a Dutch organisation, it could make lawsuits difficult here in the UK.  I suppose we'll see how this plays out.

All of this clearly shows the lengths that tobacco control goes to defame and harass bloggers who speak out against the hate and government waste of taxpayer money.  They will lie. They will steal. They will deceive. They will use foreign agents. They will publish demonstrably false information in order to further their agenda of eradicating dissent and smokers. 

And we're the ones who are intimidating?  Please.