STEALING FROM LEGITIMATE SHOPPERS

It seems the UK Govt hates us so much it plans to steal from us and will break EU law - you know, the one that "we can't pick and chose which bits we like and which we don't" - to punish us for not paying for our own stigmatisation and denormalisation.

And in the spirit of not abiding by EU regulations on cross border shopping, which the British Govt ignores only if it involves hate crime against smokers, the ConDems plan to harass us if we smoke more than they believe we should.

The EU Directive 2008/118/EC states that there is no limit on the personal amounts of tobacco that can be brought over a member state's border but the British Govt is taking no notice. It has issued guidelines which fraudulently lead the general public to believe that 1kg of tobacco or 800 cigarettes is the maximum "By Law" that can legitimately be brought home.

Their Nazi storm troopers UKBA enforcement officers have been ordered to pick out and bully selected cross border personal shoppers who legally bring home more than that amount for personal use. They haven't got a clue how to stop the Chinese dangerous imports so they really need to be seen to be "doing something" about the loss to the Treasury of £2bn in lost revenue - the amount we are purposefully with-holding until someone starts to act on our behalf.

The British Govt also needs the smoker's cash to continue backing those who design false studies, make false allegations and think they are above the law when anyone wants to see how or if their fraud was manipulated.

It seems smokers are too dirty and foul to be considered as part of NuBritish society but our money is better than anyone else's when it comes to raking in the excruciating high tax on our product to pay for the mortgages of those public workers employed to encourage Smokerphobia.

Perhaps we need to shout this out as loud as possible because these creeps obviously just don't get it or they are naively listening to the wrong people.

Look - CleggyCameroids, you might just notice a pirate image to the left of this blog. In case you're partially sighted and not stupid, I'll put it in big words for you :

SMOKERS HAVE JOINED THE RESISTANCE. EMPTYING YOUR CORRUPT ANTI-SMOKER POCKETS OF OUR CASH IS ALL WE CAN DO TO MAKE YOU LISTEN AND YOU CANNOT SCARE US OFF WITH THREATS OF HARASSMENT!

WE WILL SMOKE IN SPITE OF YOU AND IF YOU STOP US BUYING ABROAD WE WILL GROW OUR OWN.

Uh-hum - sorry - my throat is rather hoarse now and I'll try to continue in a calmer fashion.

We've been buying elsewhere than from the state for a very long time now - almost five years in fact, ever since you declared war on us, and some of us already grow our own personal supply. We will not fund your armoury of weapons against us. We want to fund everyone's healthcare on the NHS like we have done ever since its inception and until you stop funding Big Pharma supported political lobby groups, we will not fund you.

Looking at passengers coming off ferries is not where your focus should be. It should be on the criminal gangs who are targeting poor smokers with a dangerous, unregulated product. But then organised and probably violent criminals are not quite as easy to bully as ordinary law abiding people, I suppose.

If the Govt really wanted to stop cross border shopping and the supply of a dangerous black market product to those who can't afford to go abroad the answer is simple, which is why it won't be taken up.

CleggyCameroid should reduce the price of tobacco and cigarettes to the same kind of levels as our European neighbours. They will find that the revenue to the Treasury will massively increase but it won't encourage one more young person to smoke who doesn't want to. Those who do choose to smoke after Govt attempts to brainwash them into a blind state of panic about smoking are not breaking the law

We are already over-legislated to ensure that children and those under age won't want to smoke but it is time to recognise smokers are a group, we are here, we have something to say and much to add to this debate and policy.

You must get off our backs, get some common sense and independence back into this issue, and let us help the state get back on it's once sound economic two feet.

FORWARDS OR BACKWARDS?

Legalisation of gay marriage is a good thing and so I'm really pleased to see that the Govt is considering a change in the law and the idea has the support of top ministers.



Not only is it fair, equitable, and humane but it is morally the right thing to do. It's not for Govt to tell people who they should or shouldn't fall in love with or who they should or shouldn't spend their whole lives with and they shouldn't be discriminated against because some people find homosexuality offensive.



I know a gay couple in the US who got married - and later divorced just like any other couple. And why shouldn't they? We do live in the 21st Century and divorce is no longer illegal.



Perhaps I'm cynical in thinking that Govt isn't acting just out of the good of it's heart but because backing gay marriage is a popular policy.



Polls have shown that two-thirds of the public would support gay marriage.

according to the Daily Mail.



Funny that, really, because the Anthony Worral Thompson Petition to review the smoking ban has consistently been ahead of the e-petition to make gay marriage legal and yet not one whisper from Govt on their plans for smokers other than forcing us to go straight smokeless.



Cameron is right to ignore homophobic fears from those who don't like gay people because of who they are, or how they live their lives. I'm confused, however, because if all this is really about "equality" then why is Cameron pandering to smokerphobics who feel the same about smokers as homophobics do about gays?



Homophobics are scared of gay people. They think they will catch something if they just stand next to them, or they will somehow make "normal" people gay just by the very contact between them. My mother blamed my sister's first girlfriend for my sister being gay, for example, but my sister was just gay. (Quite a courageous thing to be in the macho engineering city of Lincoln back in the early 60s, incidentally. However, you need a certain amount of courage these days to come out as a smoker and defend you right to continue to smoke.)



Smokerphobics are scared of smokers. Anti-smoker propaganda has resulted in violence against smokers. Abuse against smokers is justified on the unproven grounds that they harm others in the same way that those who hated and feared in previous generations once promoted gay people, Jews and other "undesirables".



Smokerphobicsthink they will catch something from smokers, they fear that non-smokers, especially children, will become smokers just by the very contact or sight of a smoker. They feel sure that the very whiff of a smoker means they will die of something horrible too young.



The difference between Homophobics and Smokerphobics is that one group has been prevented from spreading its bile in favour of the admirable quest for an equal, tolerant, free, and compassionate society. The other is encouraged to be as abusive as possible against a purposefully demonised group officially deemed fair game for any bigot.



Govt and it's social engineers want to eradicate tobacco in the future as a recreational product even though they are happy to Frankenstein it as a pharmaceutical product to exploit its healing qualities and sterilise its stimulant factor.



They have even created enough social backing to destroy the centuries-old legal tobacco companies in favour of the relatively new Big Pharmas which evolved from the snake oil trade. To finish Big Tobacco off they must attack it's last remaining consumers.



It is with glee that they thieve a family-founded, historical company's trade mark in a bid to turn it's consumers towards their clients and funders. It reminds me of when they used to write "Juden" on the walls of Jewish businesses to stop customers going inside.



"They" are these sort of people who fill Govts full of Smokerphobic nonsense. They create panic and a false sense of alarm and popularity for policies they are happy to brag are in their own self interest rather than based on real public support or need.



If smokers wrote reports, carried out similar studies with vastly different conclusions, and had the same direct associations with Tobacco companies, or charities dependent directly or indirectly on Big Tobacco, as these so called independent "experts" have with Big Pharma, they would be brandished as evil monsters just out to get more people smoking. These people below want us to believe that they are altruistic to push us towards their products. No doubt they've convinced themselves that this is acceptable because they hate smoking and they've persuaded Govts to hate it too.



R.W. undertakes research and consultancy for, and has received travel funds and hospitality from, companies that develop and manufacture smoking cessation medications. He has a share in a patent for a novel nicotine delivery device. He is a trustee of the stop-smoking charity, QUIT. His salary and that of much of his research team is funded by Cancer Research UK. He is co-director of the NHS Centre for Smoking Cessation and Training funded by the UK Department of Health. M.R. has, in the last 5 years, had conference expenses reimbursed, been paid an honorarium for a talk and received freelance fees from Pfizer, but has not accepted support from the manufacturers of stop smoking medications in the last 3 years. L.B. is scientific adviser on tobacco control to the UK Department of Health and Vice-chair of Cancer Research UK's Tobacco Advisory Group. P.H. undertakes research and consultancy for companies that manufacture stop smoking medications. J.S. acted formerly as adviser to the manufacturers of smoking cessation medications, for which he received remunerations and hospitality. M.J. undertakes consultancy for Pfizer.



The Govt is blinkered in listening blindly to these people without giving due balance on a two sided issue. In backing the anti-smoker industry, and it's promotion of Smokerphobia encouraged by the stigmatisation, denormalisation, marginalisation and exclusion of smokers, it is crossing the line of established civil liberty rights on property ownership and the right of free association, into dangerously oppressive territory.



The gay community has come a long way in 50 years in its fight for equality, respect and tolerance. Legalising gay marriage is social progression in the right direction. Today smokers are the unpopular minority but the same persecutors who hate them, because of what they do and refuse to quit, share the same kind of mind of those who made laws against homosexuality.



The treatment of smokers is social regression based on intolerance, inequality, and dodgy manipulation of science and the law. It is taking society and the values it holds dear backwards in the wrong direction.



If we are equal, then we are equal, no ifs, buts, or propaganda. The Govt should wake up to the fact that equality is not selective.

IS THIS HOW IT'S DONE ?

I can't honestly say that I noticed much division between smokers and non-smokers before July 2007. There were a few people who really hated smoke but there wasn't the contempt, bitterness, and fear that is now shown towards people who smoke that appears to be hyped up year on year.

And to be honest, if this bloke really is a non-smoker who has been fined more than £300 because of the council's obsession to get smokers, I can understand that he might now hate smokers in a way he probably didn't before.

He might not see that it is an unjust law, a corrupt public health policy, and a bigoted council that has inadvertently caught him in the trap they set for smokers. He might just see that the "selfish" actions of a smoker has brought him trouble. It's a shame I missed that court case. I'd have liked to spoken to him.

In other news today, I note how a smoker of 50 years who began when he was 11 has quit using e-cigs. Good for him. I said ages ago that they were a great quitting aid but I am rather disturbed by his view that he is now "so pleased" to be a non-smoker.

We know that too many former smokers suddenly become wholly righteous when they quit and seem to think they have a licence to become far more abusive towards smokers than the average smoke hater. I sincerely hope that this is not the case with this chap and I hope he never sees the day when the e-cig is banned in the UK.

But it is easy to see how the war on smokers, and public disgust at them, is created by the state, it's propaganda and it's draconian and oppressive laws.

THE FIGHT BACK BEGINS

Image nicked from The Angry Exile

I agree with Simon Clark over at Taking Liberties that something seems to be finally stirring among the grass roots smokers and non smokers who are fed up with the escalating nonsense around the smoking issue.

People are finally getting active and making their voices heard outside of the internet with the next protest planned at Stony Stratford

Organiser Dick Puddlecote will be talking about why enough is enough on Talksport Radio tonight at 10.15pm. I hope he mentions something on how the boundaries on where people can and can't smoke have got to ridiculous and obscene dictatorial levels based more on smokerphobia than any proven or real concern for health.

I'll be there on Saturday with my placards, hand outs and my pocket ashtray. My problem with the outdoor ban proposed by Smokerphobic Coun Bartlett is not just because it is unnecessary but because it is the only solution on the table to what is in reality a minor problem.

Bartlett hates to see cig ends in the street so he bans smokers who he clearly dislikes when cigarette ends are a litter problem not a smoker problem. Councils began handing out pocket ashtrays when the ban first came out which was a sensible move but others like Barlett's prefer to criminalise smokers and bolster the "denormalisation" programme instead.

Of course the most sensible thing to do would be to get smokers back inside and reach a sensible compromise to suit both sides of this acrimonious issue. That is why many MPs and grass roots smokers and non smokers support the Save Our Pubs and Clubs campaign as you can hear in their own words in the two videos below.

TORIES SET THE BULLIES LOOSE

NuConservatism may be responsible for the new brand of bullying that the Govt is proposing for smokers but none of it is based on fact rather misinformation, propaganda and prejudice by a Govt that chooses to hate.

We know that the passive smoking fraud is fake and hyped up to achieve the ideological aim of a smoke free world and that third hand smoke is currently being invented to push further that fascist cause that has no basis in science but hatred of people who do something that others dislike or disapprove of.

Even alleged "respectable" and "caring" (ahem) "professional" organisations like Action on Smoking and Health have jumped aboard the third hand smoke bandwaggon in a bid to terrify ordinary people into thinking their neighbour's house is more harmful than the fall out from a nuclear explosion

And our Govt is happily taking these ideologically inspired frauds onboard with its plan to further isolate, denormalise and socially exclude smokers without bothering to listen to what we have to say about it in response or how it will affect our lives.

The report says :

"The evidence is clear that smokefree legislation has had beneficial effects on health. We also know that levels of compliance and public support for the law are high. The government believes that the aims of the legislation continue to be effectively achieved."

But what it omits is that the miracle drop post ban heart attack study was manipulated to order and has since been found to be false and dismissed as junk science by proper epidemiologists who are fed up at their work being misrepresented and manipulated by those who know nothing about correlation and causation.

Coun Carl Mimms is a humanist but no scientist and if he can get it, I fail to see how the Govt can't.

Carl, quoting his former science teacher, said :

"I can correlate the number of storks flying over Sweden to the number of births. That does not mean they caused the births."

So with no basis in science to further persecute life long smokers who choose not to quit, while boasting about a smoke free law that everyone loves and complies with, the Govt fails to mention it has only been achieved by threat, force, bankupting and jailing those "unbelievers" who questioned their democratic right to choose to exercise their own personal property rights.

Since the Govt effectively nationalised our pubs, cafes, bars, restuarants, it is no wonder that it now feels confident enough to go further and dictate to all of us what we can and can't do in our own homes:

"We will encourage local areas to create networks of local smokefree ambassadors at a community level to encourage people to make their homes and family cars smokefree. We will support local efforts to raise awareness and use behavioural change insights, for example around building positive social norms and through positively recognising people who protect their families and other people from secondhand smoke in their homes and family cars.

To support local efforts, we will work with national media to raise awareness of the risks in exposing children to secondhand smoke. The department of Health’s new marketing strategy for tobacco control will set out further details of how we will support efforts by local areas to encourage smokefree homes and family cars."

We all know what the word "support" means in this context. It means measures will be introduced to "enforce" this ideological aim by using an army of busybodies only too willing to door knock and harras smokers at home - especially if they get paid to do it.

Enforcement will not be immediate. They've started on the propaganda already. In five years time when Lansley forces us down to 18.5% of the population, it will be done by a drip feed effect of making ordinary people equate sexually abusing or beating a child with smoking within a mile of their presence which means neighbours will consider it their public duty to report smoking neighbours as smokers become more dehumanised and separated from the rest of society.

Hitler said something about how no woman would take the risk of her child’s life for freedom for someone else, and it makes me depressed that today's younger people, far removed from those times, are falling into the same kind of ideological propaganda trap which is using their children to get them on side.

One wonders how they'll feel when the Govt starts taxing chocolate and putting it in a plain pack covered with gross images of diseased, obese hearts, or the wine 'o clocks who will panic at every knock on the door when the time comes to equate parents who like an alcoholic drink to Joseph Fritzl.

Both of the above are a domino fall away now that the first on smoking and free choice has been pushed well and truly over.

FASCISM GAINS GROUND

Australia's plain packaging punishment for lifelong smokers

I was a bit hasty the other day when I wrote the post further down criticising tobacco companies and Imperial Tobacco specifically for abandoning smokers.

Fellow leper ban fighter David Atherton emailed to say tobacco companies have been silenced by quango and self interest charities which have made the law preventing them from listening to smokers while ensuring they do as they are told by the anti-smoker industry.

This was confirmed, in softer language, by the representative from Imperial Tobacco who says he will submit a blog post here when he can.

He said :

"A lot of the work we do to support our consumers goes largely unnoticed because we don’t tend to talk about it. Of course, there are numerous rules and regulations that prevent us from communicating with our consumers effectively."

Perhaps I should be more patient but when you look at how fascism has gained such popular ground in Australia, where the smoker is the shit at the bottom of a "decent" society's shoe, it's no wonder that I'm getting frustrated at the lack of perceived action.

I still stand by my claim that all political parties - except UKIP - have abandoned the smoker and it terrifies me that mainstream politicians take such sadistic pleasure in punishing smokers and watching us squirm in the face of anti-smoker bigots who are lapping it all up.

Today I was outside an area of the local magistrates court that I hadn't been to before. Outside of the main entrance was a walkway with a wall along it. No Smoking swastikas littered it all the way along but it was completely in the open air. A patio area with trees was on one side and a wall was on the other. I got to the end and sat down well away from the door and not near enough to bother anyone walking past.

A security guard coming on duty approached me and told me it was against the law to smoke there and I had to go off the grounds completely. I told him it was not against the law because the Health Act 2006 relates to indoor areas and outdoor areas where cover is less than 50%.

He insisted it was The Law because a sign in the wide open air at the front of the building said so. I told him I was active in this field and it may be court imposed policy but it certainly was not The Law but I would not argue with him. I said for the sake of politeness I would move but I would be writing to the Clerk of the Court to ask under what section of that spiteful act allows for law abiding smokers in the open air to be bullied by officialdom.

I guess that's a natural progression if you legalise harassment against one minority group and use tax funded agencies to create new offensive words to describe them. The latest one that gets me is "hardcore". I think they have to equate us with the sex industry by using the sort of word usually associated with porn. Perhaps we are perverse now as well. They certainly think we are diseased. There can be no other explanation because since the Health Act 2006 gave licence to open abuse, smokers wanting to quit now have to go to combined anti-smoker and sexually transmitted infections walk-in centres to get their tax payer funded NRT.

Low life antis who have brains about as big as a cockroach also feel licensed to be abusive and throw words about like "pathetic addicts who can't control their addiction so we have to decide what's best for them". They generally know nothing about smoking and they certainly can't have any idea about real addictions, but David Atherton does. He spoke at a conference sponsored by Pfizer and its lackeys in the anti-smoker industry who, surprise, surprise, wanted smoking to be declared not only an "addiction" but a "disease". Dave won the debate and at least those with an open mind learned some truth about smoking although the lie will still be spread because it brings in profit and allows bigots a free hand.

As a lifelong moderate smoker of 43 years I know that for someone like me who has smoked from the age of 8 years old I am more likely to die if I quit now than continue to smoke moderately.

The amount of years I've smoked appears to qualify me for the abusive term of "hardcore" but using that term for lifelong smokers is like calling people in wheelchairs spastics.

The ratcheting up of state backed abuse over the last five years is all part of the now open hate campaign to punish smokers who will not quit because we are ruining the wet dream of these so-called "progressives" to eradicate smoking in future. The last quarter of my life is being made thoroughly miserable by these bigots and liars and my very real fear is that it will get worse yet.

QUITTING CAN KILL TOO

While Pfizer encourages relatives, friends, and colleagues of smokers to bully them into quitting for their own good it doesn't shout so loudly about how its product Champix can kill those they care about

Despite this danger, and world wide awareness of it, the Australian government paid for 368,924 prescriptions in January and maybe doesn't mind how many people of that number it has sentenced to death in the long term aim to rid the country of smoking and smokers by any means.

This is the same Govt which intends to criminalise smokers in their own homes and is going all out to make their lives miserable as it hurtles towards the final solution.

Hounding them out of society, marginalising them, making people fear and hate them, is all for their own good and that of others, based on the Govt's pompous, naive, misled and ill-informed desire to believe what it has been force fed by self interest charities in coalition with their funders in Big Pharma companies.

The latest authoritative study confirms all previous studies that show PASSIVE SMOKE KILLS NO ONE and is no more than an irritant to overly sensitive people and certainly not to neighbours in apartment blocks who are frankly lying if they say it is.

The scientists say :

“Among never smokers in our population, we observed no association between either exposure to ETS at home or at the workplace and lung cancer risk (Table 2). In general, the effect estimates for ETS exposure were similar between the total population and only among never smokers.”

The only truth about smoking is that The Lie hurts smokers and those around them when the health truth is not that clear cut. Govts should not be taking sides on the issue because it is backing prejudice and tyranny with unreasonable and unnecessary smoking bans and restrictions tailored to punish a minority who don't want to quit enjoying a legal product.

Some smokers die young but most live to old age and some even to ripe old age as centenarians. Big Pharma and self interest anti-smoker charities say smokers are weaklings who can barely breathe never mind run and yet the real life anecdotal evidence always seem to prove something different.

Luckily the smoker runner linked above hasn't had any bad side effects from Champix but I know - as someone who likes to run but not in a competitive sense - that I'd much prefer to smoke a natural product moderately than take a man-made chemical alternative which has a shady reputation.

Quitting is better done without any Pharma quit aid. It will make smokers, their relatives, friends and colleagues believe that smokers are addicts and that products are the cure because Big P wants money and lots of profit. If it was true that tobacco is addictive, and passive smoking is harmful, then everyone would be smokers today and not less than in any other age.

All smokers need is to want to stop smoking and the rest is easy An age-old truth that still stands up to scrutiny.

WHAT NEXT? YOU.

Whatever your view about tobacco and smoking, anyone with an ounce of perception can see that if these measures go through then it clears the way for restrictions on all sorts of legal products that the authorities don't like.

That is why it is imperative that you add your name to the petition. If you don't, and this goes through unchallenged, then it's time to take bets on what will be next.

For my money it will chocolate and sweets in plain packaging - cakes which are not allowed to look pretty, burgers sold on the black market on street corners, and fizzy drinks being hidden under the counter.

If they manage to eradicate tobacco use, and ultimately move to the next stage of criminalising law abiding smokers, don't think it won't be you next and whatever it is you like.

These proposals are preposterous. Tobacco is legal. There is no evidence that these sort of restrictions make smoking less attractive or accessible to youths.

I hate perfume. I hate the smell of it and that it makes me sneeze. I can't bear sitting near anyone wearing it in a restaurant as it spoils the taste of my food. The packaging is pretentious, the contents poisonous when inhaled, but I would not back any moves to restrict it's point of sale. Nor would I expect those who have a favourite brand to have to guess what they're buying because someone else like me hates it and starts making laws to eradicate it.

Look - we know what risks we take when we smoke. Kids are far more knowledgeable than we were about the dangers of active smoking. It's almost the first thing they learn these days. It's probably why the numbers of people taking up smoking are markedly lower than they were when I started.

When we reach the age where we can legally smoke it should be our choice based on informed risks, and not because Nanny Britain has sent us to the Bully to be punished because we won't take her good advice.

SHS, which I do not accept is any kind of major risk, can be avoided with choice so banning the consumption of a legal product in public is nothing to do with health and everything to do with Govt backing of denormalisation of a minority social and lifestyle group.

Further restrictions are just the next step towards making a legal product illegal.

I've always supported education on tobacco risks but I am against propaganda.

These proposed restrictions are simply propaganda. They will achieve no aim but further denormalisation of law abiding and mostly older lifelong smokers who face criminalisation if they do not comply with this new health world order.

Whatever it is that you like, do you seriously want to be next? Sign the petition and make sure you won't be.

THEN AND NOW

Righteous folks who care about people are often offended by the comparison between how smokers are treated in the healthist 21st century and how Jews were treated in the fascist 20th century.

The offence is caused because they believe the propaganda about smoking and want to try and save people who smoke from themselves. Their stance comes from a caring perspective but they don't realise that they have been lied to by those who not only hate smoking but people who smoke too.

They say that it's outrageous to compare not being able to have a fag with what happened to the Jews and I actually agree with them. But for smokers the issue is not about being able to smoke or not. It's about how anti-smoking propagandists backed up with Govt money and resources are inciting hatred against people who smoke to turn wider society against them.

Even if they stopped smoking the hate would continue. Their alleged rotten teeth wouldn't suddenly be clean and white would they? Any fatal illness they might have picked up wouldn't suddenly get better would it? They'd still be considered as a smoker even if they had stopped smoking wouldn't they? They'd still be accused of having contributed to global warming and the deaths of millions to come from their past "passive sharing of smoke" or "passivrauchen."

That is where the comparison with what happened to the Jews - motivated by the same kind of hatred - is relevant. After all, even some Germans back in the days of Nazism believed that all Jews had to do to stop the hate was change their religion. After all, religion is a choice isn't it?

Their Govt told them that Jews were as poisonous as mushrooms and like a bad mushroom could kill a whole family, Jews could murder a whole village, a town or even a nation. Perhaps it was the righteous of those times that cared about people who jumped on the bandwaggon of hate against Jews for the "greater good" and allowed the holocaust to happen by passive compliance.





Just as Jews then were promoted as greedy, selfish, dangerous, and fat smokers, so are smokers today compared in similar terms.

What was missing from wider society then to enable to climate of opinion to swing with the Nazis against the Jews - and other undesirables - was the principles of tolerance, fair play, and compassion.

Just as it is missing from THIS intolerant person who refuses to believe the world is big enough to share because he personally hates smokers - ie: people now defined as a lifestyle group.

Just as protection of the Jews and positive comments about the Jews was banned in the 1930s, so is any protection of or positive comments about smokers banned in the 21st century.


Whatever people might think of smoking, how ever much they may fear it, hate the smell of aromatic tobacco, or care for those they want to save from themselves, no-one can deny that the bottom line on this issue to keep both sides happy, and to end hate, is tolerance, choice and respect for people's differences and beliefs.

I don't believe that this will end in the gas chambers for smokers but how far down the road of hate do we want to go as a society? I believe the constant attacks on smokers by the state with public support will end with them being forced into sub-normal classes, criminalisation with laws made against them, and ultimately being locked up as the Jews and other undesirables were before the holocaust happened.

I find it ironic that ordinarily fair minded and compassionate people who are offended by the comparisons of hate directed at smokers now and Jews then are persuaded by the tool invented by Himmler - propaganda.

THE NEXT TARGET

Now healthists have smokers under control they are swiftly moving on to the next target for profit and general propaganda using the same formula.

It took them 40 years of Big Pharma funding to make the lie of SHS a "fact" and then hype up it's dangers year on year to the point where there is now an hysterical fear of smokers and smoking.

They had to make other people believe that smokers could harm them before Government would take them seriously. They are now using the same format on fat people who they've only recently started to persecute.

Apparently :

"It looks like obesity is becoming more infectious," said Alison Hill, a graduate student at the Harvard-Massachusetts Institute of Technology Division of Health Sciences and Technology.

What next? Banning anyone over a certain size from entering public places in case we "catch" their fatness? Do they really think we are that stupid?

How the lifestyle of this man doesn't make him 48 stone is beyond me. He's doing everything the healthists say will give you the obesity you could pass on to someone else.

At least people are getting wise to the manipulative political methods of self interest groups, fake charities and the Pharma Industry in exaggerating the threat of "passive obesity."

Meanwhile for smokers the insults continue in the name of everybody's else's good health. ASH is now promoting them almost daily in news releases as child abusers using the usual tactic of telling a lie often enough that it becomes the truth.

This kind of approach is motivated by hatred with no scientific grounds to justify what is a disproportionate "threat".

Hot on the heels of accusing decent, law abiding, considerate and caring parents past and present in the most despicable terms, the anti-smoking industry now has to show how much of a financial burden they are on everybody.

Of course all of this is part of the "Denormalisation" plan to promote :

Smokers as malodourous
Smokers as litterers
Smokers as unattractive and undesirable housemates
Smokers as undereducated and a social underclass
Smokers as excessive users of public health services
Smokers as employer liabilities

But they are looking for even worse language in the hate campaign.

I told them that to "reframe quitting as “breaking up” with a deceitful best friend " was patronising. I said they had to learn to live with lifelong smokers who would not quit and if they wanted to reach them, they should stop the propaganda.

I said their language offended. They short listed a comment about cigarettes as "a deceitful best friend" to the top six of a voting poll to find new insults to use.

Failure to engage with smokers is proof in my opinion that they don't want to work with smokers but against them by promoting language that promotes smokers as weak and all the rest.

Smokers - I feel sorry for you, Fatties - I feel sorry for you too. Fat Smokers, it looks like you are public enemy No 1 but I am on your side.

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Boris Johnson caused quite a stir with his comments on the NuGovt's ethnically cleansing of the poor from London because of changes to housing benefit.

I only heard about it while watching Question Time this week and the outrage spluttered forth from various members of the panel who didn't like Boris's choice of words.

Historian Simon Schama said it was an insult to those that had actually been ethnically cleansed, oppressed, wiped out as a race in the holocaust, or thrown into gulags that made the use of this kind of comparison in modern times offensive. He said we really should mind our language.

I knew exactly where he was coming from and although I have a lot of respect for Mr Schama, I have to say that I profoundly disagree. By not suggesting such comparisons are we in danger of forgetting the hate that led to such "cleansing" of historical social and racial groups?

Just knowing it happened in the past against certain groups, doesn't mean it can't happen in future. I don't believe that using such comparisons denigrates or diminishes the exclusive torture, eradication attempts, or cruelty of those who have suffered under historical tyrants. Just because we live in the 21st century doesn't mean it won't happen again. It must be highlighted whenever there is a fear that public opinion of a group could lead to unfair treatment of that group and only by using this language can eyes be opened.

I talk of smokers here, of course, and the often "offensive" comparison made between the hatred of smokers and the hatred of Jews in Nazi Germany. It comes about specifically because Hitler invented the still unproven theory of passive smoking or SHS in part to get at the Jews.

Of course smokers are not being packed off and sent to death camps even though they are excluded from all public places and there is no employment law to protect them from prejudicial employers. The hate that some people have of smokers is the same as the hate Hitler had against the Jews and other races he thought "filthy" "unhealthy" or "undesirable."

Had NuLabour stayed in power, I have no doubt that by the end of their term smokers would be criminalised and the first stage of locking them up in uncomfortable places such as prisons would have been the next item on the eradication of smoking agenda.

Constantly keeping in the public's conscience how such atrocities as the holocaust came to be means there is less chance of the tyranny which brings such outcomes as "ethnic cleansing" going unnoticed by the masses in future.

Ethnic cleansing doesn't start there. It starts with hate, misinformation and misrepresentation by Govts with ideological aims whatever period of history we live in and whatever group it is aimed at.

GOD AND MY RIGHT

"God and my right shall me defend"

Covering Magistrates courts does make you slightly cynical about the meaning and dispensing of "justice."

It's a legal system, that goes back to King John and the Magna Carta and the plebs having the right to be judged by their peers. It's something to do with fairness but there is nothing fair about British justice.

The problem is that now we are a few centuries on, the average defendant is not being judged by his or her peers, they are being judged by three people who are of a different social class and mindset and can't possibly relate to the third generation Chav stuck in poverty without hope of getting a job let alone being somehow "equal" to those that sit in judgement on the bench.

I guess that's why there are certain "statutory" penalties in a bid to ensure some kind of "fairness" which does make me wonder why on earth three magistrates sitting on a bench often go out to retire and consider sentence for so long that they fail to get through an average court list during one morning's sitting.

There have been times when sitting in a magistrates court and trying to make a living from each case I pick up is like sitting and having teeth pulled. For example, when someone's up on drunk and disorderly the penalty is always going to be a fine. So why on earth do some benches have to go out and take half an eternity to come back and fine the defendant? I end up coming out sometimes lucky to have just covered my petrol costs.

The court I cover had a district judge last week. One man sitting on the bench with actual legal knowledge who whizzed through each case and in the main dishing out what I considered to be "fair" sentences.

I say "in the main" because there was still the odd occasion when his judgements or comments when sentencing made my blood boil.

There was the case of the Lituanian who came to this brave new world of NuBritain looking for work. Instead of finding his share of gold in this Promised Land, he found the odd few days of work for which he wasn't always paid. With rent to pay, and a need to eat, he accepted an offer to lend him money in the hope that he would be able to find more permanent and fair work to repay the debt. He couldn't.

His benefactor then moved in to demand the loan be paid back. The Lithuanian couldn't oblige and the loan shark couldn't have been more pleased because he now had a new "foot soldier" to do his dirty work. He was part of a gang who preys on migrant workers who fall on hard times to get them to go out shoplifting high value goods.

The Lithuanian was taken to certain stores, given a foil-lined bag (which deactivates the door alarm) and told to steal certain goods. He got caught and he alone had to face the music. He'd never been in trouble before but the comfortably off district judge had no sympathy. He said the defendant shouldn't have allowed himself to be used by this gang. He jailed him immediately, without pre-sentence reports, to six months jail - although he's likely to serve three.

In other words, the district judge played into the gang's hands. They'd used the Lithuanian as a human shield and the judge shot him. He said that he had a duty to protect the multi-billion pound retail industry that loses "million and millions every year". And I thought the system was about being judged by your "peers" and protecting the little man against the power of those with enough wealth to oppress you into submission.

I know I'm quite naive at times, and too soft-hearted, but I would have at least given him a chance. If the ultimate aim was to protect the "industry" then surely by allowing him his freedom, backed up with a police operation to follow him and find the people behind his offending, then the industry would have been better protected by finding the root cause.

I guess that with this "foot soldier" out of the way, the gang will just continue with another desperate and wretched migrant without work. It doesn't feel as if "justice" for anyone has been done in this case.

That case made me sad but two others - one involving a migrant worker and the other a local both on drink driving - made me angry. The judge statutorily banned them from driving and fined them. That didn't bother me but what made me angry was when the district judge looked over their means forms to decide the level of fine they could pay.

In both cases he noted that they were smokers. In both cases he made comment about how they obviously had lots of money if they could afford to smoke. In both cases he said he was minded to fine them more because of it. In both cases he ticked them off and said they were damaging their health. He didn't, however, increase the fine following his threat. I would have reported him he if had. I would have done the same if a man wearing a designer shirt was fined more because he liked nice clothes.

Thanks to the district judge's efficiency, I came out of court with an armful of cases which helps the income a lot but I think when it comes to "fairness" perhaps three heads are better than one. Perhaps three wouldn't be anti-smokers. Perhaps three would have come to a different view about the Lithuanian. Perhaps this antiquated legal system is the best we've got.

British justice may have started with the aim of fairness but it's evolved into a means of revenge, bureaucracy and tax collection.

PUBS WANT SMOKERS

So now it's official. We know Nulab and their anti-smoking paymasters in Big Pharma lied to push through the blanket smoking ban.

You may remember that they only asked anti-smoking groups for their opinions and even then when the ONS survey was done it showed more people in favour of choice.

NuLab turned the figures around and then conned the public into believing that it was acceptable and desirable to hate smokers and call for their social exclusion.

Now the truth is out. 70% of pubs want to cater for smokers.

Will the bigoted and discriminatory coagulation govt that has ConDem-med us all listen? I sincerely doubt it but if they were honest and really did care about equality then they would.

The next election can't come soon enough for me.

Meanwhile, I've just put my script out in the hope that I can change my career and earn enough to buy my freedom from a country that despises me and is working towards my criminalisation - but only after it has first turned my family, friends, neighbours and colleagues against me and so far it is doing a damn good job of that.

WHY I HATE DENTISTS

They are money grabbing con-artists who don't give a damn if you're teeth are about to fall out unless you can pay them an arm or a leg and then, in my own experiences, they ruin them for life.

And this has just given me more reasons to despise the profession

The idea behind this scheme is obviously to further denormalise and humiliate smokers into quitting when we know all these conditions put down to just smokers affect people whether they smoke or not. Most of these conditions, such as "stained teeth" and "halitosis" and "hairy tongue" are usually the result of smokers and non-smokers not brushing their teeth.

Staining can also be caused by other things such as drinking a lot of red wine and gum disease is hereditary. Our dictatorial masters in the last Govt paid millions, you may recall, for an ad campaign warning drinkers that they are an exaggerated amount of times more likely to get oral cancer if they have more units of alcohol than nanny advises.

Back in the good old days when dentistry was free on the NHS, and dentists got loads of dosh from the state, they were calling us in for check ups every six months. I never had a problem with my teeth but every six months they would fill one - or two or even three.

When the old fillings I had from my youth began to wear in the 80s the dentist started filling them with gold.

"I can't possibly afford that," I said at the time the then dentist suggested it.

"Don't worry. The NHS will pay," he said and he didn't care as long as the cash rolled in.

Low and behold, after all my teeth were filled - with mercury I might add - they then wanted to start pulling them. This was a step too far. I changed my dentist, got a second opinion and was told my teeth were fine. I've still got 'em all.

Then NuLab came in and priced the poor out of dentistry in the same way they priced them out of Higher Education. The truth is, I can no longer afford to go to the dentist and neither can many people I know who have been so desperate for dental care they have resorted to such things as bleaching their teeth to remove stains, using superglue to stick loose crowns back in, and even pulling their teeth themselves.

My family - except me and a non-smoking sister - all lost their teeth because they all succumbed to inherited gum disease which has passed down to one of my non-smoking daughters who has to pay £1000 every three months for treatment for the rest of her life.

I have a troublesome front tooth which needed a crown after I got smacked in the mouth once and it needs attention but I know it won't get it until dentistry becomes affordable again and, I should add, smokers are treated equally. Being a smoker means I would rather die than access any healthcare. If I get ill, I will die because I will not seek help from a health service that despises me. Rest assured, antis, this smoker will not spend even £1 at your mealy mouthed expense to seek medical treatment for any serious illness - even if I have paid all of my life for the privilege.

Schemes such as those offered in Kent won't help anything but to incite more disgust at smokers. It should be illegal and dentists should be the ones who are criminalised and humiliated by the state.

I KNOW HOW HE FEELS

Someone sent this to me via Facebook and I just had to share. Enjoy ... or not depending on which side of the fence you sit!

THE FIGHTBACK STARTS NOW!

Easter has been all about family this year for me and great it was to see them all. But now it's over and I'm back to reality and catching up on news of the last few days.

THIS on Leg Iron's blog caught my attention. It serves as a timely reminder, now that the election has been called, why smokers, particularly, should NOT vote for one of the three main parties.

Of course there are plenty of other reasons why people should vote "other" and I would say UKIP because of it's common sense and human policies and the fact that it is the only party that is big enough to take on the Lib/Lab/Con alliance.

Smokers are somebody too - 12 million of us - and we will use our vote. My guess is that Cameron - the main contender - for the next Big Pig In Parlt - would be wise not to continue ignoring us!

A DEPRESSING READ

I'm feeling a bit down in the dumps today. Perhaps it's the latest assault on smokers or maybe it's that I'm still dragged down from yesterday's inquests.

As far as smokers are concerned, I am in despair that the persecution doesn't stop. It's like a constant smack in the head delivered by righteous, self-interest idiots that have the power of Big Money and Big Govt backing them against the little man (or woman!).

It has taken the anti-smoking industry 40 years to get control on the grounds of a freedom harming someone else. Previous Governments haven't bought into that idea because banning things on the grounds that one doesn't personally like it, was seen as undemocratic and communist. There was, and still is, no evidence to back up the tripe the anti-smoking industry spouts but what changed was that left thinking lettuce munching health obessives got into Govt. Can we say without doubt that Patricia Hewitt - who promised exemptions to the blanket smoking ban but then pulled the rug from under everyone at the last minute - was not paid to do so by Big Pharma bearing in mind recent news ?

Now the antis have what they initially said they wanted - a public smoking ban so they didn't have to mix with smokers - they are pushing further and further. Where will it lead when you think of how these people depend on persecution of a minority group for their income. They will never stop. It matters not what new restrictions they get. It will continue. Their jobs, mortgages, holidays in the sun, etc, thrive on it.

In future they will not be the educators we asked for 40 years ago to inform us and our children of the risks of smoking. They will be the enforcers who will be in jobs taking children away from smokers, denying smokers jobs, and guarding them in jails. Once they have smokers under complete control, they will move on to others - drinkers are obviously next, and watch out fatties - they're also heading your way soon!

My despair comes because most ordinary people don't see this as a freedom issue. They are not thinking where will it lead. Those smokers and non-smokers who are trying to fight honourably and courageously, are just not joined up in their thinking or their campaigning and so what hope? The antis know this. They are simply biding their time to finish us off.

See - my thinking today is thoroughly depressive but perhaps it was sitting in inquests yesterday that has put me in this mood. I just can't seem to shake them off despite being used to attending such events in 20 years as a journalist.

As soon as I was asked to go and cover the case of an 18 year-old who hung himself, I knew it wasn't going to be the jolliest of days. It appears he killed himself because of a girl. His mother found him. I can't begin to imagine what it must be like to live with that image for the rest of my life as I am sure she will.

The next case concerned a 59 year old man who died from asbestos cancer which had invaded both lungs and his chest. Ironically, he was working to rewire a hospital in the late 60s and early 70s and that's where the damage began. He inhaled the asbestos dust from sheeting and lagging he ripped out to get at heating pipes.

Just as depressing was the case of a 41 year old man who killed himself with his car exhaust fumes. There seemed to be no reason why he would want to take his life. Doctors' reports were read out in all cases. This one spoke of how the man was rarely seen but had recently visited the surgery for smoking cessation. Frustratingly, the doctor did not mention whether the man was given a drug like Champix to help him in his quit efforts. Many of us know too well what the side effects are of that monster and other anti-smoking drugs. I don't think the coroner or the health professionals involved would even have considered it.

SMOKING KILLS?

I agree with the sentiment in this blog piece - smoking didn't kill this chap - living did!

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/georgepitcher/100028258/the-sad-early-death-of-a-smoker-aged-85/

SMOKERS DIE YOUNGER?

This piece from Simon Clark's blog today rather begs the above question. Is all this health propaganda bollox?

Antis tend to dismiss this kind of case as being an exception to the rule but there are quite a few of these centenarians.

http://takingliberties.squarespace.com/taking-liberties/2010/3/7/still-smoking-and-drinking-at-100.html

WHO SPEAKS UP FOR SMOKERS

According to this article

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/6803981/Parents-face-ban-on-smoking-in-front-of-children.html there is no-one in Cabinet to speak up for smokers now we are to be aggressively persecuted with yet another anti-smoking campaign aimed at stopping us smoking at home and in cars - using chiiildren as the excuse, of course.

The writer didn't say that there are, in fact, lots of people and organsations who do fight the smoker's corner and I salute them all and every single one of you who writes, blogs, debates on forums, or just stands outside in the cold and spreads the word.

I'd particularly like to mention F2C, Forces, Forest, and The Democracy Institute, Rich White and Chris Snowdon, and many individual fighters of liberty who work every single day in their own time, using their own money, and their own expertise to bring common sense, truth, and justice to the debate. The only thing they lack is a listening ear.

Neither the govt nor the shadow cabinet wants to hear of the smokers' plight because they are cowards and sanctimonious snobs. It seems the media is not listening either. Why didn't the writer of this piece even bother to get a balancing quote?

According to Dick Puddlecote , http://dickpuddlecote.blogspot.com/ they are using "charity" money to pitch our kids against us and scare them to death, no doubt, with a campaign aimed at getting them to bully us to quit.

Their vile hatred and muck spreading is separating families. It's time for the Govt to butt out of our lives and to take it's vicious propaganda with it.