THE NEW YEAR BIG CLEAN

I haven't been tagged in this game but I thought an office recce with a view to an early spring clean would be a good idea before the New Year is out.

Like Leg Iron over at Underdogs Bite Upwards I won't post a photo of it because it looks like the aftermath of a Tsunami.

I think Dick Puddlecote started it off and it got me thinking that my desk does need sorting out. I've barely been in my office lately as I've filed stories on the move from my lap top and I've worked in other offices away from home.

After the holiday I'll have loads of marking to do. I'll be using my office more and when it's tidy I will find my mind feels clearer. I wonder if that's something to do with that Chinese Feng shui thingy.

The first thing I see every time I walk in the office is the brown envelope on top of my huge office sized desk which I bought from a YMCA charity shop in 1994.

The envelope contains all the submissions for a newsletter that's on deadline by the end of next week. Under that sits a couple of old court lists and scraps of paper with scribbled short hand notes on them. That's all balanced on top of an old notepad that needs to be "filed" with those in the pile on the office windowsill. I have to keep them for five years for legal reasons.

The desk does have an "in" and "out" tray which is generally used as a paperwork dumping ground for stuff I no longer need but cling on to. I am a bit of a hoarder.

The tray is currently filled with a pack of file dividers which I bought but never got round to using, draft pages from old finished screenplays and stories, academic essays, and several hard-backed small notebooks containing several random ideas.

My keyboard sits on an old (and rather tatty) leather writing pad that was left in our old house by the previous elderly tenant. The house became vacant when she died. I guess whoever cleared it out didn't want that so I claimed it.

The working area around my keyboard is quite clear and has a copy of last week's Skegness Standard on it, two pens and one pencil, a highlighter and a stapler, one page of a work contract, and an empty Post Office travel money wallet now empty of my Czech Korunas.

A Flyer advertising the Jolly Brewer's Christmas panto waits to be blogged about but I guess it's a bit late now. I really wanted to take granddaughter No 1 but I got a stinking cold and so we didn't make it. Hopefully next year.

A UKIP newsletter, more draft fiction pages, an unopened Bulletin From Brussels newsletter, and another hardback notebook with random fiction ideas scribbled inside, balance on top of my hard drive.

On the windowsill the pile of notebooks wait to be filed in the box under the desk. There's an old photo of me, my mum and my sister next to that and bizarrely an old ornament of the Last Supper which I bought from a tourist stall near the leaning Tower of Pisa in 1982.

All I need now is a couple of black bin liners and Pledge and it'll be full steam ahead. I'll start the new year afresh.

I thought about writing an end of year review before I get started on this office clear out but then anyone interested in past rantings at contemporary times can just check out my archive on the left.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year to you all. I hope it's a gud 'un.

DODGY SMOKE FREE POLICIES CREATE CRIME

I saw the above poster today and it sent me flying into a rabid rage because it appeared to promote a new negative image of the smoker.

I looked and saw someone so stupid and pathetic because of their "addiction" to smoking to not notice or not care if they smoked rat droppings and poison.

I also believe that this kind of propaganda aims to plant in non-smoker or never smoker minds negative thoughts about the smoker. They will subconsciously look at a smoker's lips in future after absorbing this image and then subconsciously see that filth and think "urrghh".

I don't use the black market but I very much doubt that the ingredients said to be in the "fake tobacco are really there. After all, the anti-smoking industry always lies or exaggerates a relative risk in it's scaremongering tactics of achieving it's ideology. I simply don't believe it and I can't believe that anyone else is stupid enough to believe it either.

I do believe, however, that this poster will encourage those psychotic anti-smokers in their abuse of law abiding consumers of a legal product.

Smokers are always the better authority on tobacco - we are lifelong, generational consumers of the product. Many of those who work in the anti-smoking industry have either never smoked or smoked relatively briefly. They are not the experts on this subject. Neither are they scientists. They are simply the propaganda messengers of the puppet master.

They have been telling us for years that smokers have no sense of taste because of their tobacco use. Now they advise us to tell the difference between what they allege are "dodgy" cigs and "real" cigs by our sense of taste.

The fact is if black market tobacco tasted as bad as these smoke free people say it does, then smokers wouldn't use it. They'd look elsewhere or quit and the one offering bad tobacco would lose custom.

The truth is that the tobacco control policies supported by groups such as Smoke Free Lincs has caused the problem of black market tobacco and increased the risk of children getting hold of it while putting even more smokers in line for increased harm rather than harm reduction.

History shows that high tax leads to a prosperous black market economy and prohibition makes criminals rich while the state gets poorer. Restrictions on tobacco also lead to increases in youth smoking. Children and young teens don't have to show ID to the man with a van to get as many cigarettes as they can afford.

Let's hope the New Year sees a return to common sense policies such as ensuring responsible and independent shop keepers stay in control of their stock without the interference of the Anti-Smoker industry's infantile and hysterical policies.

It's also time to stop tax payer funding of misinformation put out by smokefree groups. My wish for 2011 is that the NuGovt finally stops this rot and starts to listen to independent small business people and legal consumers and their representatives.

Bad characters

Recent pub visits have reacquainted me with two of my bêtes noires of irritating behaviour in pubs. First is the “bar prowler”, a regular who fancies himself as a bit of a character, and who isn’t content just to stand by the bar, but instead walks a regular beat between the counter and some other feature, often the fireplace. Even though probably a sad and lonely individual, he clearly sees himself as the “cock of the walk”. Certainly a cock.

It’s even worse when he starts engaging people in what he no doubt imagines is genial banter. At times, this can verge on the deranged, such as the old boy who told me on walking into a pub that I looked like Elton John. For a second, it seemed amusing, until it clicked that he was actually a total fruitloop. Frankly, customers don’t want these tedious so-called characters prying and disturbing them.

Then there is the “space eater” who sits in the gap between two tables and thus deters anyone from using either of them. Obviously, if the pub is very busy, people will muscle in, but if it’s quietish they’ll tend to sit elsewhere for fear of appearing rude. The best I’ve ever seen was in a Peak District pub where one “character” plonked himself down in the gap on the bar side of a large two-table alcove that could probably have accommodated sixteen people. Sitting at one table but putting your drink on the other is a favourite technique.

Pubs can still work

The prolonged holiday between Christmas and New Year always seems to tempt a few people out to visit pubs who might not normally do so, and produces some encouraging scenes of pubs doing a good trade. One was in a well-known pub on the edge of the Stockport built-up area, which had been ticking over nicely at lunchtime, and where it was good to see at about 1.45 pm a party of five youngish people come in, settle themselves around a table near the fire and enquire whether food was still being served (it was). Not a pint between them, and no cask beer either, but even so it was a new generation rediscovering what pubs are about.

I also called in Sam Smiths’ Boar’s Head on Stockport Market Place, where the experience was a carbon copy of two years ago. Absolutely heaving, with hardly a seat to be had, the clientele still predominantly male, working class and over 40. It’s rare now to see a pub with so many pint glasses on tables. The day being a bank holiday, I don’t think they were serving any food either. Of course, Old Brewery Bitter at £1.43 a pint does help, but its success is down to far more than just cheap beer.

But, on the other hand, I went in a Good Beer Guide listed pub, to my eye a very pleasant, cosy establishment with a real fire, less than five miles from the centre of a big town, and I was the only customer at one o’clock. No doubt some will say “it’s not a lunchtime type of pub”, but who ever said that twenty years ago, and back then I’m sure there would have been a good buzz of custom.

A PARTY WITH POTENTIAL

I never realised quite how much was wrong with Britain until the blanket smoking ban made me look and the more I hear from UKIP the more I am convinced it is the only party that knows what needs to be done to put things right.

My generational party allegiance to Labour ended in 2007 as the party abandoned me for wealth and control. My left-leaning ideology naturally looked towards the Liberal Democrats for hope but I found it to be the same as Labour and of no real relevance to me, my life or that of my family.

With gritted teeth, I checked out the Conservatives under fluffy Dave with a sense of irony that it might now fit my views more than my old party that renamed and remodelled itself as Nulabour. I saw no difference.

UKIP was the only alternative to look at to ensure that me and my kind had at least some form of political representation in the country. I joined with little hope that it could achieve anything but I found a party filled with all that I recognised as familiar and relevant to the life I have lived as a British subject for more than 50 years.

There is nothing "Nu" about UKIP but it certainly is the new party of the people. It waits only for them to wake up and see that the old parties do not speak with their voice.

UKIP may not be perfect but it's strength lies in it's growth from the bottom up and it has the most charismatic leader than any other party.

The myth that the Lib Dems are somehow the third hope when all else fails has been shattered with the party's appalling performance given it's first taste of real power.

It lied about tuition fees, it lied about the freedom scam and repealing unpopular and oppressive laws, and it has shown itself to be thoroughly untrustworthy.

Perhaps that is why UKIP is now the third party in Wales. I suspect that with so long to the next general election, UKIP will gain ground, more people will hear its message and feel empowered by by getting involved and making a real difference, and it will be the third party of England too. I hope that the British electorate shows the current Coalition dictators how unpopular they are by voting UKIP in droves at the forthcoming council elections.

The above interview with UKIP leader Nigel Farage is well worth watching because he talks a lot of common sense. It's quite long and the sound is not great (at least on this computer) but I defy anyone not to be impressed.

He talks about tax, the EU, the adverse effects on EU migration, such as the British girl denied a factory job because she couldn't speak Polish, and he mentions the smoking ban, lifestyle choice, climate change, and modestly because he is asked, what he would do as Prime Minister.

That probably won't happen any time soon but I believe that one term, at least, of UKIP will shove those parties back towards their traditional roots and common sense policies. As the second party of the UK, it would be one that finally acts like a proper opposition.

Farage also makes traditional Conservative Party supporters squirm with his challenge to them to find anything familiar in the Nutories, which is Nulabour in different colours, and asks if Dave is really what they voted for.

Time, gentlemen

Here’s a very eloquent elegy on the decline of the British pub, written by the obituaries editor of The Economist. Funny how the elephant in the room is scarcely mentioned, though.

The current attitude towards pubs, with all the great and good flocking to “save” them, seems in many ways to be similar to that towards rural railways in the Beeching era - people become increasingly sentimental about them, but in practice use them less and less.

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON

Santa when smokers were friends


That's me done for this year. All my shopping finished, wrapped, presents delivered and fridge, freezer and cupboards packed full of enough to last the festive season.

Luckily there was stuff left on the shelves as people down my local supermarket packed trolleys like it was the dawn of Armageddon. My other half kept mumbling that anyone would think that the shops won't be back to normal business in two days time.

Grandaughter No 2 and Daughter No 2 braved the icy conditions up north to get home for Christmas. There'll be a veritable boxing day feast of family visits when Daughter No 1, new husband, Daughter No 3 and Grandaughter No 1 arrive.

As we go into the fourth year of social exclusion and denormalisation one can only hope that what the National Death Service says about Nanny is true. Somehow I don't think "scaling back nannying health advice" will mean anything for smokers.

Let's hope it's not just going to be replaced with something even more covert than denormalisation.

I'd like to be positive and believe that the NuGovt has seen the error of it's ways as the coalition takes a nose dive in popularity - but then with NuTory wealth ministers cozying up to the bigots at the fake charity ASH, one can only assume we're in for another rocky year.

For now, it's Christmas and they can all go to hell. Smoking at home isn't illegal yet.

I thank you for reading my blog this year. I hope my rants, rages, and moments of absolute despair have been of interest.

Merry Xmas everybody. I hope it's peaceful an blessed and the New Year brings hope and comfort.

Meanwhile, I raise my glass of mulled wine, and tilt my lit roll-up to your good health and sheer bloody determination not to let the bullies win.

10 ways Christmas is good for your health

Thanks to Dick Puddlecote for pointing out a refreshing antidote to all the politically correct, healthist miserablism we have to endure for 364 days of the year. No. 1 is particularly relevant:

1. DRINKING ALCOHOL…

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that moderate drinkers live longer than teetotalers. Moreover, the recent Million Women Study in the UK, which looked at the link between drinking and cancer, found that nondrinking women had a higher incidence of cancer than those women who had one drink a day. American researchers found men consuming two alcoholic drinks a day had a 36 percent less risk of developing diabetes.

Mind you, as always it's wise to ensure you don't exceed your daily 3-4 units, even on Christmas Day.

I smelt a rat

...when this case was originally reported, and now it seems I was right:

A policeman who escaped a drink-drive ban by blaming a pub barman has been arrested for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.

Pc Myles Hughes, 34, said he was only over the limit because he had been served the wrong drinks. The barman involved in the original case and a GMP sergeant have also been arrested.

Pc Hughes pleaded guilty to drink driving at Macclesfield magistrates court last month. But he kept his licence after the court was told barman Paul Doyle gave him stronger drinks than he asked for.

Mr Doyle, 36, of Hurdsfield Road, Macclesfield, said he gave Pc Hughes one shandy and four pints of lager top – lager with a splash of lemonade – instead of the shandy he ordered.

It always seemed something of a cock-and-bull story, to be honest.

The timebomb that stopped ticking

In recent years we’ve constantly been told that we’re experiencing an ever-rising tide of alcohol consumption, with all the attendant problems it brings. But, in reality, it has been falling since 2003, and many indicators of alcohol-related harm such as arrests for Drunk & Disorderly have fallen too. Funny how you don’t read that in the Daily Mail.

Likewise we have often been been warned of the “obesity timebomb” that by 2050 was going to result in 60% of the population becoming officially obese, and a whole generation dying younger than their parents from all the attendant health complications. Well, surprise surprise, it turns out that isn’t happening either, and indeed obesity rates have started to fall.

This has been achieved despite a decline in the proportion of the proportion of the population following the (made-up) official “five-a-day” guidelines, and scarcely any reduction in the rate of smoking – although of course there may be some connection between smoking remaining steady and obesity ceasing to rise.

In reality it is always dangerous to assume a trend will continue indefinitely, as human nature is always ultimately likely to provide a restraining factor. The statistics may suggest that 60% of the population will become obese, but looked at subjectively, is that really credible?

But of course we rarely hear any good news on health indicators reported in the media, as it goes against the agenda of those who want to control our lives and impose a régime of joyless austerity on everyone.

As the great H. L. Mencken said many years ago, “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed - and hence clamorous to be led to safety - by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” Indeed it’s very hard to find any scare that in hindsight hasn’t turned out to be at best much exaggerated and at worst wholly spurious.

A WEEK OF INSULTS

It's been such a busy week that I've hardly had time to do anything other than read a couple of blogs and post a few links on Facebook.

THIS ONE from Simon Clark is important because it presents the truth about SHS - or passive smoking - and how and why it came to be the stick that hysterical bigots beat smokers with.

A smokerphobe called Simon Crompton - who loosely describes himself as a "journalist" when he's obviously more of a propagandist - hasn't got a clue about the true science - but he knows for sure the hate he wants to spread about those he fears and dislikes.

By coincidence his bile came up just after I finished reading THIS from Terry Simpson MD who says:

The Surgeon General also stated that 49,000 deaths per year were caused by second hand smoke. As a surgeon, I was stunned, because I had never seen an autopsy report listing second hand smoke as the cause of death. Nor had I seen this as a secondary cause of death. So I asked six pathologists if they had ever listed second hand smoke as a cause of death – not one had. In my years of clinical practice, I have seen patients die from many devastating diseases, and yet I have never seen anyone who has been disabled by, or has died as a result of, second hand smoke. This was my first clue that perhaps there was more hyperbole than science involved in the reports issuing from the Surgeon General’s Office. To give a contrast: 33,000 people die per year of pancreatic cancer – all of the pathologists have listed pancreatic cancer as a cause of death.

If second hand smoke exposure is a significant risk factor for developing lung cancer, then we should expect to see increased numbers of cancer cases in non-smokers who are exposed to regular doses of second hand smoke. Has there been an increase in the incidence of lung cancer among nonsmokers over the last 40 years? The answer is quite simply… No.


I've also been reading Frank Davis's Blog and the fascinating debate on the link between active smoking and lung cancer with three posts from contributors that I admire, Chris Snowdon, Rich White and Dave Atherton.

I like Frank's latest post about Junican's game with Tobacco Control who were asking their employees to come up with new ways to shame, humiliate, abuse and insult smokers which was also featured over at Dick Puddlecote's place.

Tobacco control lunatics have to believe that people like Junican are tobacco industry lobbyists. They can't bear the thought that the little people are so pissed off at the anti-smoking industry's manipulation of their lives, and control of their Govt, that they have moved into a position of self defence and preservation.

Junican - who says he is just a 71 year old who looks after a 69 year old who can't enjoy the pub anymore - is like the rest of us who post on forums and other sites. We're just ordinary ignored people who don't get paid, are branded in some of the most inhumane and derogatory ways, and are fighting simply for the right to be left alone.

We don't promote tobacco and don't care if people smoke or not as long as we can be left in peace. We've heard the propaganda, we've scrutinised it and we've discarded it. We don't deserve to be punished and abused just because we won't do as tobacco control says.

We do promote choice - a concept that tobacco control can't grasp. The other thing we fight to prevent is not people quitting smoking if they choose - but criminalisation of those who choose not to.

The anti-smoking industry is pushing things that way through propaganda untruths which get picked up and promoted as truth by useful idiots like Crompton to incite further hatred and keep the funding ball rolling.

None of us fought or cared a damn about tobacco control methods until they conned a stupid Govt into excluding us from every public place four years ago. (The link shows the NuGovt is just as bigoted, blind and incapable of intellectual and independent thinking on this subject as the last.)

Since the ban, which was the first step before the rest could follow, tobacco control, part of the anti-smoking industry, have moved on to label us as child abusers, parents of criminals, and not worthy of more than being left to die if we need operations. Despite the fact that we cost the state less than healthy people

That rent-a-quote celebrity quack Dr Hillary Jones should be struck off in my opinion. Any doctor that takes this stance must be breaking the Hippocratic Oath. I think he should, perhaps, remind himself of this bit:

I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon's knife or the chemist's drug.


If he really is a GP, and I don't know as I've only ever seen him on GMTV and in trashy papers, he should be reported to the General Medical Council for his lack of sympathy to patients and his promotion of inequality of care.

The other thing I saw this week was the story about how two smokers were sacked for smoking in the open air. What a rotten thing for Morriosn's to do just before Christmas. Scrooge would be proud. I'm boycotting that store's branch here. I hope others do the same.

This all comes as a result of years of Denormalisation a public health tool promoted by the bigots at ASH which has only recently come out into the open because it is so unethical they tried to hide they were using it.

The other thing that has kept me from blogging apart from real life work this week has been the dentist. I finally got one after years of being without a decent NHS dentist. This one, a Greek Cypriot, seems OK but I hate sitting in health related waiting rooms and having to look at lying posters exaggerating the propaganda myths of smoking and smokers.

One poster promoted that it was better to give up and get fat. "Weight can be lost - lungs cannot" it screamed. I wondered who among the denormalised smokers would quit and fear then getting denormalised and excluded further because they become "obese." It seems you can't win either way.

My dentist had a suggestion box. I wrote on a piece of paper that nice pictures on the wall would be far more relaxing that all the smoking signs. I won't hold my breath that my next visit will see any change.

There has literally been loads of suppressed rants this week but they'll have to wait. I didn't intend to blog this evening and my admin has taken a back seat as a result so I don't know if I'll be blogging again before Christmas. My last working day is tomorrow and I've still got all that shopping to do before Saturday.

It's not a pleasant thing to do anymore. It's no fun trudging through town and shops and not even being able to stop for a cup of tea in the warm with a smoke - something that used to be the highlight of the whole experience.

Guest beer syndrome

The various discussions in recent months about whether cask beer should aspire to being a “premium” product led me to wondering whether the current approach to selling it in the on-trade actively works against that aim. In most pubs aiming to appeal to beer enthusiasts, not just the general drinker, cask beer is mostly presented as a series of ever-changing guest beers. The pubs may have one regular house beer (anyone remember West Coast Green Bullet in the Crown?) but the vast majority of the range changes from week to week, or even from day to day. You are only ever likely to encounter the products of most micro brewers as guests.

I can’t think of any other consumer market in which this approach applies, and it certainly doesn’t for premium bottled ales in the off-trade, where the rate of churn is much lower and many of them are fixtures year-on-year. Neither does it for non-cask beers in pubs – when did you last see a “guest lager”?

Clearly as the “guest beer” approach is so widely adopted, it is something that appeals to customers, and so you can’t blame pubs for doing it. But it creates an image of cask beer as a kind of unpredictable, here-there-gone-tomorrow, pot luck product, not one that is reliable and dependable.

If I was a brewer wishing to build up a reputation for my beer, I would want to see it as a permanent fixture on as many bars as possible, so customers knew where it is available and had the chance of a repeat purchase if they liked it. If your beer is only ever seen as a guest, you will never build up much brand loyalty.

An ebbing tide floats no boats

Last Friday in the pub was one of those classic “setting the world to rights” nights, and one of the subjects we got on to was pub closures. The proposition was advanced that the closure of failing pubs would serve to make the remaining ones stronger. Now, I’m the last person in the world to advocate flogging a dead horse by trying to keep fundamentally unviable pubs in business, but I don’t think it’s quite as a simple as that, as it ignores the question of how the demand for pubs works.

If we were talking about petrol stations, the idea would be entirely correct, as the demand for road travel is pretty much independent of the intensity of petrol stations, provided that people can get to at least one. But much of pubgoing is dependent on the actual presence of pubs in locations where people live, work or choose to socialise. Also, pubs are not offering a homogenous product, but a distinctive and individual experience. For every pub that closes, there will be a proportion of its customers who simply stop going to pubs rather than moving to one down the road, and a segment of society for whom pubgoing ceases to be something that is an option in their normal routine.

Of course pubs will continue to close in the face of declining demand, but to imagine that closures will do much to improve the viability of pubs that remain open demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the way the market works. A good metaphor would be that, as the tide goes out, the fact that some boats are grounded doesn’t mean that those still floating are more buoyant.

And I have made the point before that areas where pubgoing remains strong have lots of pubs, whereas the presence of closed pubs tends to indicate an area where the pubgoing habit has fallen off a cliff.

Half of all advertising is wasted

...but you never know which half. I was reminded of this old saying when leafing through a copy of the Stockport Pub, Food and Music Guide, a local independent publication that is a sort of competitor to the local CAMRA magazine Opening Times and all too often is a cuckoo in the nest of the Opening Times holders. It’s a glossy, all-colour, 44-page A4 magazine that, in its most recent issue, contains no less than 77 adverts for pubs and clubs. Given that it doesn’t seem to reach the Cheadle and Bramhall areas, that’s over half the establishments in its catchment area.

Most of the ads are very standard stuff, promoting weekend karaoke and live football on plasma screens, illustrated by stock photos of non-real looking pints and young female singers, so you have to wonder what benefit the pubs actually derive from them. Or is it just a case of “the pub down the road is doing it, so we don’t want to miss out”? It’s noticeable that some of the top-drawer pubs such as the Arden Arms and Magnet are conspicuous by their absence.

I can understand pubs advertising in a CAMRA magazine, as it might draw in new customers from visitors to the area, or promote events such as pub beer festivals. It’s also a way of making a contribution to the “cause”. But if you don’t have anything distinctive that a hatful of other pubs don’t, it is hard to see the point. And, personally, karaoke and footy are a big turn-off.

One of the most laughable ads is for the Horse & Jockey in Hazel Grove, which boasts of “a terrific range of ales”. Now, the Magnet, Crown or Railway could justifiably make that claim, but for the Horse & Jockey, which probably has John Smith’s Extra Smooth and one intermittently available cask ale, it is absurd.

A DESPICABLE THEFT

THE WAR YOU DON'T SEE

Modern reporting has been put to shame by distinguished journalist Jon Pilger in his new film The War You Don't See.

Pilger shows how deeply the press failed in its duty to keep the public informed during the Iraq war and how complicit it was with Govt. My jaw dropped when the BBC said it's duty was to report for the government and what the Government says but didn't think it necessary to use information from non-embedded journalists out in the field to give the real picture.

I suspect standards in journalism have fallen partly because of the need for instant news 24/7 and partly because the new breed of journalists just don't scrutinise things in the way that Pilger's generation did. Instead they meet constant deadlines with whatever they've got at the time.

Add to that the competitive nature of the industry which at it's soul is business. Reporters need contacts and Govt uses that need to keep journalists compliant and tame which fills column inches and keeps editors happy.

The British and American press let Bliar and Bush get away with war crimes and even encouraged them to an extent for not wanting to look behind what they were fed by junior ministers and civil servants who had to look as if they had balls to their respective administrations.

The press wanted to believe the Iraqis saw us as their saviours but they weren't showing the body parts of bombed children being buried in mass graves. They weren't showing us sons being dragged from their homes and shot against the wall, the torture, the men gunned down in the street by a US helicopter crew for fun.

Neither did they say that the affect of the "Shock and Awe" bombing of Baghdad was like the dropping of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.

Not one more life should be lost for that war. Not British, not Iraqi, not American. The Iraqi people should be allowed to begin to rebuild their country in peace. The thousands of spaces being created on the UK national memorial for war dead should not be carved with another young sacrifice to Bliar and Bush's campaign.

It's time we were out. Now is soon enough. The media should be making a bigger noise and could if it stopped filling acres of newsprint and hours of airtime on vacuous celebrities and phoney lifestyle issues. It actually could do something to help save lives that really need saving while protecting children who really need protection from being blown up and disfigured or murdered by a shameful war.

The media is also turning a blind eye to the atrocities happening in Israel against the Palestinians because they fear the Israeli state. Another programme I watched recently was a historical documentary about World War II. It struck me as I watched the pitiful inhumane acts committed by zealots against skeletal men, women, children and babies, that if those victims of the holocaust visited our time they would be appalled at the way their countrymen treat other human beings.

I am sure they would compromise and share and want to build bridges and strong friendships not teach generation after generation that war and violence is the only solution. Their memory stands as testament that it is not.

Fascism is with us in the mainstream leadership of the western world again and the press either hasn't noticed because it is safe in its bubble, or it just doesn't recognise fascism unless it's leaders wear uniform and kill Jews, women and homosexuals.

Of course this New World has all been achieved through the use of propaganda and some of us on a domestic scale know exactly how damaging that can be and how dangerous it is when journalists ignore half the story.

TIME FOR A CHANGE

It's nice to see the Leicester Mercury bring up the issue of the draconian smoking ban after the news that Holland has relaxed it's laws to allow for choice in certain areas.

Landlords here are reasonably asking for our law to be amended on common sense grounds.

Most people in the article think getting smokers off the street is the fairest and best social option - except one person who is more bothered about the smell of his clothes.

He says he never went out before the ban but he always had a choice. Smokers don't. There were always places for smoke phobics to go that smokers wouldn't visit and vice versa. I still don't get why that sort of person - obviously in the minority - has to have it all his own way.

In that article the landlords are talking about the majority of their customers, some of them non-smokers, who also call for choice. In just that article the anti-smoker is outnumbered 3/1 by those who smoke and those who do not.

What was that you saying about "Change you can believe in," Dave - eh? Perhaps I didn't hear you for the loud cry of your bedfellow Cleggy who screamed he was going to tear up the statute book in the name of fairness and civil liberties.

IT'S HOW YOU SAY IT THAT COUNTS

Be sure to follow the instructions in the Armstrong and Miller sketch below if you live in one of those areas where temperatures are forecast to plummet between 10 and 20 degrees below freezing.

Enjoy.

Oak-aged keg

There’s been a lot of talk recently about the rise of “craft keg”. However, despite the assertions of BrewDog, realistically it is not going to mount any kind of head-on challenge to cask beer – it will be confined either to venues that don’t have the facilities or turnover to sell cask, or to specialist low-volume beers. You can drink BrewDog Zeitgeist on keg in the Magnet in Stockport, but it doesn’t exactly threaten the fourteen or so cask beers on sale there.

In the past, the vast majority of British keg ales have simply been inferior equivalents of beers also available on cask, or brews at the bottom end of the market that never even made it to cask. No beer enthusiast would really be inclined to bother with them. However, in an interesting development, Innis & Gunn have decided to launch their 6.6% ABV oak-aged beer in keg form, to be sold only in halves and one would expect at a hefty price.

I can’t say I’ve enjoyed this when I’ve tried it in bottle, but it does seem to have built up a following which justifies its launch on draught. The presence on bars of a distinctive, British-brewed ale with a “connoisseur” image that isn’t available in cask form is something entirely new – it will be interesting to see how it does. And, if it succeeds it will reinforce the perception of keg, not cask, as the high-quality, carefully presented product commanding a price premium.

SIGN THE PETITION

This Forest video presents reasons why you should sign the petition against ludicrous further restrictions on tobacco and end the war on legal consumers.

It only takes a few moments. Don't let the undemocratic EU get it's own way. Consultation is supposed to involve the actual public. It's not supposed to be a matter for Eurocrats to sort out among themselves based on the ideology of wealthy and powerful self interest lobby groups.

A message with out-takes below.

TORIES BACK LIARS AND FRAUDSTERS

In it's bid to march ever onward in the criminalisation of tobacco culture and the war on consumers, the NuGovt has decided to believe liars like Jack (dreary) Dromey who support hate crime.

Dromey who has the misfortune to be married to champagne socialist Harriet Harperson, lied through his teeth using an ASH handbook no doubt to scupper serious debate on what to do to save the great British pub that NuLabour set about killing because it hates the stench of old Labourite working classes.

Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)said : There was one point made in the debate that I think should be disregarded. It was absolutely wrong to resurrect the issue of the smoking ban. I say that for numerous reasons, but in particular because, having represented the union members concerned, I knew people who contracted cancer and died as a result of working in licensed premises. I think that that debate should rightly remain closed as we move on ...

So come on Dreary Dromey, who are they and where exactly did this cancer come from? What type of cancer was it? And how can you be sure that it was the fraudulent issue of passive smoke that caused it when there are so many risk factors involved and cancer is genetic anyway, you lying scumbag excuse for a person pretending to care about workers.

How many has your bigoted, sanctimonious, lying, greedy, never to be elected again party put out of work since this ridiculous piece of propaganda that comes from hate ruined lives by the millions - 12 million to be exact.

I think Dreary Dromey should make the information he relies on to further the exclusion of 12 million adults known. After all, it's what the hate is based on. We have a right to know if he is really lying or not.

Perhaps I am wrong in thinking the tripe from Harperson's bitch's mouth came from the ASH hate handbook - perhaps it came from his Mrs. After all, she hates smokers too and I am sure he is too scared of her to speak up for himself. Utter wimps like that we do not need interfering in politics.

Come on Dromey, go cook the dinner ready for when the Mrs gets home or ask your Harriet to get you a job somewhere else. After all, you wouldn't even be an MP if it were not for nepotism and the fact she put you forward to double the greedy income in your household, no doubt.

And they wonder why the country is in such a bloody mess and why the little people like me are so fucking angry.

Public inconvenience

Stockport Council have recently announced that, as a cost-saving measure, they are going to close all of their remaining ten public toilets (and this in a borough that twenty years ago had over thirty). This apparently will save the princely sum of £105,000 a year. However, this doesn’t mean that people will be left with no choice but to relieve themselves in the streets, as they are supposedly replacing the closed toilets with a community toilet scheme.

This involves opening up toilets in council buildings and – for the payment of an annual fee – those in business premises like pubs and cafés, to use by the general public. Clearly, if facilities are there, it makes sense to make them available, and in areas where public toilet usage is likely to be low it can be a “win-win” situation in expanding provision at minimal cost. I’m certainly not against it per se. It could also be a good idea for many rural pubs.

However, it really is no substitute for providing proper public toilets in busy town centres where there is plenty of pedestrian traffic. It is notable that the web page has no entries for Stockport town centre. (In practice, I know you can always pop into Wetherspoons where there is one, but a timid female pensioner might not know that, or have the confidence to)

One problem is that business hours may not correspond with those when there is a demand for toilets. Few pubs open before 11 am (and many not before noon), yet in a shopping centre you would expect a toilet to be available once the shops were open. Also, for such a scheme to be effective, it needs flag signs on lampposts saying “Dog & Duck – Toilet Available to the Public” to bring it to people’s attention (something I have seen in the Perth & Kinross district of Scotland). Window stickers are not enough.

If you were a licensee, you might think that £600 a year was a useful source of extra income in hard times. But you are effectively surrendering the right to control who comes in your pub and use your facilities, and allowing all and sundry to troop through your bars without buying anything. Once one or two unsavoury incidents have taken place you might start to question whether it’s worthwhile. If my pub was in a location with a lot of footfall past the door, I’d be wanting more like £6,000 than £600. I can’t, for example, see the Chestergate Tavern being happy to become the official toilet for Stockport Bus Station.

While the provision of public toilets by councils isn’t a statutory obligation, it is extremely important to allow people to live civilised lives and maintain a degree of dignity, and regrettably this move is all too typical of the tendency of councils to cut back services provided to the public while continuing to featherbed internal administrative departments, and all the time seek to blame it on government rather than their own inefficiencies and warped priorities. I have written before of the “bladder leash” restricting the movements of the elderly, pregnant women, diabetics and people with a wide range of medical conditions, and this is now being applied to Stockport.

In terms of the council’s overall budget, £105,000 is a drop in the ocean, and less than the salaries of numerous senior officers. You have to wonder how many people are still on the council’s books doing non-jobs like Smoking Enforcement Officer and Five-a-Day Co-ordinator who wouldn’t be missed in the slightest if their services were dispensed with.

The lack of toilets may also be a factor encouraging people to use shopping centres like Cheadle Royal or Handforth Dean rather than traditional district centres, thus acting directly against the council’s declared objective to get people to “shop local”. (Extortionate parking charges are another factor, of course) And don’t shop owners in those district centres have a legitimate expectation that their business rates will pay for public toilets as well as pavements and street lighting?

Surely in this age of information freely available via the Internet it should be possible to create a unified database of all public toilets showing their location, opening hours and cost (if any). The Aussies can manage it, so why can’t we? It could even be provided as an “app” for smartphones. In the days when there was a reasonable assumption that public toilets would be available in most locations, there might have been little need for this, but now they are becoming increasingly few and far between it would provide a valuable service for tourists and indeed anyone spending more than a short time out of their house or workplace.

And yes, I know it could also be used to facilitate “cottaging”, but to use that as an excuse not to provide toilets at all really is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. If cottaging is a problem, it needs to be dealt with on its own terms without disadvantaging legitimate users of public toilets.

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.

CNUTS!

I'm amazed that in NuBritain the debate about the cost to the tax payer of poor children hasn't got as far as suggesting their parents should be sterilised to save the state money.

I'm sure it will get to that before too long the way this country is becoming more fascist by the day.

There's always some prick with a tuppence ha'penny opinion that dismisses kids purely on their background and while they think this way I can't imagine that the opportunities for those born on the wrong side of the tracks will ever improve.

Commenting on the analyical, yet somehow clinical analysis of how the poorest are having more children to be kept by the rich - who might perhaps be just too selfish to share their wealth or time with dependent offspring - one person says :

Those children will be academic failures. They won't get decent jobs and they won't produce tax revenue in the future to offset their cost.

... and in a stroke writes them off when real life is not black, white, or written in numbers. It is, for many, a journey of starting somewhere and wanting to be better and provide for your children something better than you had yourself. What helps in this journey are opportunities and jobs.

I think I'm typical of underclass roots. My mum was a single parent before the term was invented. They used to call 'em widows or abandoned women in my childhood.

She had five kids. My sister - her fourth child - wrote to the local paper in the 70s in response to an article that claimed kids without fathers were more likely to become "juvenile delinquents" (quaint) without work.

She had a fistful of qualifications from school and after hundreds of applications still hadn't got a job. Her point was that she was trying. None of us, incidentally, have criminal records.

I was more of a rebel and education didn't mean very much to me. I left school without taking any exams. I remember the local reporter who came to interview my sister asked me why and I simply replied: "What? and end up like that? No thanks."

I was happy to get a job down the local shop and then the local factory and didn't take any notice of my mum who warned the future would be different and to get on you had to get qualified at something.

That sister became a nurse. She is married now with one child after many years as a tax payer and working mum. Thanks to the destruction of the NHS she is now re-qualifying in a different trade to continue the contribution to keeping her family. Limited cost to the state and with a very intelligent son who will contribute to society when he leaves school.

My eldest sister has never been on welfare. She is now a retired teacher living in the US. She has one child born in the US. No cost to the UK state.

My brother has worked all his life and served his country in the RAF. In hard times, of which there have been many, he has even slept in a tent in a ditch and in his car to work in other towns when he hasn't earned enough to also afford accommodation. He is no cost to the state. He had one child who is married to a relatively high earner. Both hard workers. Both more than capable of looking after their two children. No cost to the state.

I ended up a single parent with four children. I was dismissed as all of those derogatory things normally said about single parent mothers. The difference between then and now was that I had a chance to make good after falling by the wayside. Today when you reach bottom you get stuck there.

Thatcher was a cow to people like me but she did at least give me free education - a way out. I took it and soon became a taxpayer. I had 10 years on the social which was nothing more than a hand to mouth existence I can assure you. There is nothing worse than having to ask your kids in winter if they want to be cold or hungry because you can't afford both heating and food.

I had jobs between and so did pay some taxes for my keep but they were always hard to stick with simply because of child care issues. Thanks to Mrs T's free education, I got a profession which meant I could afford child care when I needed it and I've been a proper and "decent" member of society now for over 20 years. I have many more working years left in me to continue this contribution.

My eldest children have never been dependent on welfare. Both are tax payers. One a high earner. I am sure they each give back in one month more than we ever had handed to us on welfare in at least half a year. In fact, when I had to give details of my "income" when I started college, I found my family had cost the state £6000 in three years. When I first became self employed, I paid £5000 that year in tax - I recall it was the same amount paid by some mega rich tax dodging financial contributor to Bliar's NuLab party.

My son is now in college. Like my elder girls, he won't go to University because we are priced out of it. Labour did that. NuConDems have made that even more remote. But he has talent, family support and a dream to work in IT. I am sure he will achieve that and contribute his share to the state as well.

My youngest daughter fell by the wayside at 15 after inheriting some of her mother's immature rebellion. It's a very long story that one day I might tell, but the state wouldn't lift a finger in trying to help me get her back on the straight and narrow.

Despite this, she still didn't end up as one these so called "feckless breeders". She has a child now she is 21 and she is expecting another. Her long time partner works but has a very low income. The state falls very short in its duty of base financial care to her family and we often bridge that very large gap between hunger and basic existence with family financial support.

In not far ago times gone by her partner would have earned a very decent living via hard labour on the land but that opportunity has been taken from him and given to a host of migrant workers who do not contribute to the state welfare system.

Nothing about their life is easy despite the myth and as she says:

"I work 24 hours a day as a mum. I'm a cook, a cleaner, a parent, a teacher, a referee, a nanny, a nurse, a maid, and a comforter.. I dont get holidays, sick pay, or a day of work.. I work through the day and night, I'm on call 24hours a day, 7days a week.."

I have no doubt that when my daughter's children get older she will go back and follow her career dreams with suppport from both our families. That's one thing the underclass is good at. It looks after its own.

Daughter number 2 also has a child but she works to keep her and pay for her child care despite having a stingy rich ex-half who fails to pay his fair share.

I am sure that her state tax, my state tax, and daughter number 1's state tax combined more than pay for the pittance that daughter number 3 gets.

I have no idea where these "hundreds of thousands of pounds welfare claimants" are or who they are but in terms of underclass parents, I haven't met any of them.

To break the welfare system and dependency is very simple. You have to give people jobs and support business and commerce. Coming out of the EU will help a lot with that. The state could also make education free to those who want to progress in life, and encourage entrepreneurship rather than strangle it with red 'elf and safety/licence/jobsworth's tape.

The bottom line is that we are human and we will have children because that's what humans do. We have no right to tell anyone that they have no right to be a parent or have as many kids as they want.

If we don't want to pay for them that's another matter but we have a duty to help those in the underclass reach opportunities and get work that many of them want if only decent paid work was available. The lack of it is what causes the problem not just that people are born into poverty.

I sincerely fear that this debate can only take us further back towards Victorian times.

OI CAMERON!

A new piece from political comic genius Phil Williams. Enjoy!



On a more serious note, I hope you can watch this linked video which explains how the British people were conned by successive leaders who sold out their freedom, economy, culture, and constitution to make us that which we said we'd never be - Slaves.

It's moving and poignant but I have no idea how to share it from Facebook to here.

UPDATE: A friend has uploaded the aforementioned video (best watched in full screen).

OUCH

Prague was amazing but depression set in as soon as I landed back in the Uk especially on catching up on the Govt's final solution for smokers announced while I was away.

Yes, they have us by the proverbials visualised above in a poster advertising an art exhibition that caught the attention of many passers by in Prague.

The sense of freedom I felt in that city was immense. My step was lighter as I walked even in several feet of snow, my fear disappeared. I felt equal and included for the first time in four years.

The first cafe I went into reminded me of the one I used to visit in my local indoor market. It was the sort of place that anti-smokers didn't go because it was more underclass than middle class. I felt at home.

I was also hugely pleased that choice was on the menu in the Czech Republic with signs to indicate both. I walked past those that didn't allow smoking. It was the sort of thing we used to have here before we became a Communist State of the EUSSR.

Oddly I smoked less. Culturally in the UK smoking was never encouraged on the street until July 2007. In my youth there was a name for women who smoked out in the open. It just wasn't done. Now people binge smoke before going into buildings. They are forced out into the open to be ridiculed, humiliated, outcast. This is not about their health but hatred of them by others.

Govt has called them out to be targets.

One thing I was reminded of in Prague was the effectiveness of air ventilation systems. You couldn't tell if you were in a smoking or non-smoking restaurant, pub or cafe just by smell. I always had to ask when I entered or look for ashtrays on the tables. Smoking is not an issue there at all because these people know the true value of freedom and what defines it.

I was actually moved to tears in the Mucha Restaurant to be allowed inside such a wonderful place and to be welcomed. It was very cultural, and like stepping back to 1920. The jackboot lifted from my neck and I could breathe fresh unbiased air. Smoking was part and parcel of it's ambience. We had a four course traditional meal as a jazz pianist played.

It was named after the Czech art nouveau artist Alfons Mucha who was one of the first to be arrested when the Gestapo entered the city in 1939. He did not survive the experience as many more classed as "undesirables" did not.

Yes, the Czechs know the true value of freedom, the danger of denormalisation, and the exclusion of "unwelcome" human beings. Their Jewish cemetery is testament to that.

I've worn my red F2C badge, which has a striked-through cigarette with the words "What Next" underneath, since attending the first TICAP anti-prohibition conference in 2009. We now know it is Obesity, particularly but not exclusively.

The badge attracted a lot of interest from English speaking Czechs who wanted to know what it meant.

"Ah yes, I've heard about the marginalisation of smokers in the UK," said one young man when I explained how awful life was here and how oppressed it's citizens were.

He was shocked and disappointed because of that mythical ideal Eastern Europeans have about the model of freedom - Britain. I told him he should never visit the UK because it was a terrible place of unspoken oppression. I said smokers were jailed, evicted, promoted as child abusers, villified, humiliated, and abused. I said other "undesirables" were being targeted for similar treatment.

Another non-smoking Czech told me he smoked for 20 years but quit. He said choice was important and he was saddened to hear how people are treated here because they like the "wrong" foods, they drink alcohol and they smoke. I joked we'd all have to have blonde hair and blue eyes next to become accepted by "normal" society.

We used to be the laughing stock of Europe because of this lifetyle pettiness but we are now feared by those in Eastern Europe who do not want to revisit their oppressive history now they are free citizens. I found those in Hungary the same when I visited Budapest about three years ago. The UK is Definitely off the list as a holiday venue for some.

It is why Klaus Vaclas, the Czech president, is fighting further integration of the EU where this lifestyle control comes from.

I also explained that my reason for visiting Prague was the only way I could show any resistance to our treatment. I explained about the Resistance Movement we have that refuses to fund the UK denormalisation plan by buying our tobacco abroad. Tobacco at CzK 170 a 50g pack was more expensive than a pack of fags at CzK 61. Both were far cheaper in the city than the airport so buy in Prague for best value and boost the local economy which deserves our custom.

The heaviness and unhappiness that I feel because of having to live in the UK under the dictatorial LibLabCon govt immediately returned on landing and going through customs. Signs threatening this that or the other, were littered along the walls as we made our way through passport control.

I flew from East Midlands airport which has a smoking section. They cage smokers up outside. In Prague airport the pub is smoking. Non-smokers have to sit outside or choose an non-smoking alternative. At least they have one.

I would love to go again but as part of the Resistance Movement I plan to see as many European cities as possible so somewhere in Spain is next on my list. After tasting -16 degree temperatures in Prague, a little bit of sunshine next time would be nice.

Committee rejects cut - for now

Welcome news that the House of Commons Transport Select Committee have come out against the cut in the drink-drive limit proposed by the North Review earlier this year. As I have argued before, there is no guarantee this would save a single life, while it would undoubtedly result in the closure of thousands of pubs without addressing the real problem which is people driving when well over the current limit. Hopefully this will give further ammunition for Transport Secretary Philip Hammond, who is known not to be keen on the idea, to officially reject the proposals.

They did, however, say that they ultimately supported reducing the limit to 20mg, something that would impose quasi-prohibition on all responsible people with a driving licence and leave very few pubs still in existence outside city centres, but that is a long-term aspiration, not an immediate threat.

Cat to be castrated after all

The Treasury have just published the results of their review of alcohol taxation. In general, this doesn’t recommend any major changes to the tax structure, but there are two significant exceptions.

The first is that they are planning to introduce a new higher rate of duty for beers over 7.5% ABV. The intention here is to increase the cost of super-strength lagers such as Carlsberg Special Brew which are clearly associated with consumption by problem drinkers. However, it will apply across the board and so will also hit traditional British strong ales such as Robinson’s Old Tom, and imported products such as Duvel and most Belgian abbey beers.

The report argues that such products will only see a small percentage increase as they are already typically sold at a premium price, but even so it seems unreasonable to penalise them when they are in general consumed responsibly and are not associated with problem drinking. Old Tom is not something you can pour down your neck at a rapid rate of knots.

I would have thought there was a golden opportunity here for CAMRA to campaign for an exemption from this new tax for cask- and bottle-conditioned products, whether home produced or imported. (In my view, the whole thing is misconceived, but obviously CAMRA can't be seen to be standing up for Special Brew, and at least this would give them something reasonably productive to gnaw at)

And surely what will happen in practice is that the super-strength lagers will simply be reformulated to bring them down to 7.5% ABV to avoid the new tax, so there will be a clustering of products at that level. Arbitrary tax cut-offs of this kind inevitably lead to distortions in the market place and are prone to unintended consequences.

The other proposal is to introduce a reduced rate of duty for beers of 2.8% ABV or below. As I’ve argued before, I can’t see this making much difference, as it is difficult to brew beers at such strength with much taste or character, and realistically the demand for them is minimal. On the other hand, had the threshold been set at 3.5% it might have encouraged a revival of the milds and light bitters which have become a neglected part of the British beer scene.

Minimum pricing on the way?

I was taken aback to see the headline in today’s Sunday Telegraph “Minimum price for alcohol”. But, on reading the article, it seems that all that is planned is preventing retailers from selling alcohol for below the cost of duty plus VAT. So nothing really to worry about there, although it might cause a problem if you want to get rid of slow-moving stock that is approaching its sell-by date. In reality, very little of this goes on anyway, and I suspect it will end up making no noticeable difference to anything.

Not surprisingly, the anti-drink zealots don’t think it goes anywhere near far enough. But I can’t help thinking that the idea that setting a minimum unit price for alcohol in an attempt to reduce “alcohol-related harm” is the logical equivalent of trying to improve road safety by saying that nobody should be able to buy a car for under £15,000.

Spuds glorious spuds

A while back I was taken to task in the comments on this post for ignoring the range of “hugely varied and interesting food” that is now available in pubs. But I still believe that the vast majority of pubs continue to embrace an old-fashioned, conventional approach to food that largely ignores the revolution in eating habits in this country over the past thirty or forty years.

I was recently in a pub that is held out as a local example of high-quality pub food. The menu included seventeen main dishes, of which thirteen were served with potatoes of some kind. The menu doesn’t offer (as some more enlightened ones do) the opportunity to swap one accompaniment for another. Where's the rice, the pasta, the noodles, the couscous, the garlic bread, the pizzas?

While not quite “chips with everything”, that isn’t exactly a warm embrace of the contemporary international menu. I suspect in most pubs claimed to serve “good food”, you would find much the same.

NUVOTERS DEBATE

Keir Hardy, A Labour Party founder and it's first leader.

I see Wallace and Gromit Red 'ead Millibland thinks he can sort out NuLabour's problems

Below is my response to that which sparked a minor facebook debate and made me think about my politics and why they've turned the way they have.

Your party stabbed it's core voter in the back by pandering to the whims of the anti-smoking industry and the lifestyle police. As a fourth generation smoker - third generation Labour voter - I say Labour is no more. Your NuTony created a NuParty that lost its roots. Unless you recognise that smokers are somebody too, you will NEVER be elected again and you don't deserve to be!

AH - I dread the thought of them idiots ever getting in again.

JS - why did you ever vote labour!! even after the war, the bloody socialists freebies grew and grew its now outgrown the private sector whos taxes are mind boggleing the red tape never ending. think about it free cradle to the grave NHS. well it never was free it was bleeding expensive, dont tell me you voted for kinnokio and his leftie friends the liberals. who cant wait to desert back to labour, the cowards.please dont tell me you wanted Blair and not Hague .the unions never gave a flying f**k about the working man..And they care not a jot for the small business man. or for the pubs that have shut down, or that cigs are $5 a packet not a f**king jot..or about open door policy that Brown let rip. if thats socialism you can stick it..what a rats arse they make everytime they get in..PC brigade liblab crap..

JS - PS Ed miliband is a complete nerd, and if hes the old socialist he can take a running jump..in fact socialism is kind of control freakery..

AH - how can anyone vote labour?

Patsy Nurse - JS - I was old Labour for generational reasons. My grandfather fought WW1 and my dad WW2 both poor working class. You start somewhere with politics and for me it's always been about the party that supports the little man. I was't even interested in politics really apart from putting my cross in the "right" place every four years.
I never voted Tony Blair because there was something not Labour about him that I can't put my finger on. I then abstained from voting until last May when I finally found a party that spoke my language - a mixture of both Tory and Labour or something that perhaps I still can't put my finger on.
The smoking ban woke me up politically. It made me look around, and believe me I really wanted to go over to the Conservatives as my political ideology developed but I couldn't honestly see any difference between what they offer and what NuLabour offers.
The NuCons are moving things around, trying to put things right - I accept that - but in the little issues that matter so much to many people - and the important one of the EU - I only see things getting worse.
The Limp Dumps have never mattered to me. They simply take votes from parties that could actually do something useful to bring simple common sense and fair poltiics back to what was once this Great nation of Britain.
I think there are a lot of people out there who are like me even if smoking hysteria is not the issue that most concerns them.

JS - liberal party is no more and there hasnt been a liberal party for yonks. they are not democratic either. the labour lot have now become so far left its unbeleivable Blair was a leftie he was never a conservative not while he was married to chery f**king booth. Cameron is supposed centre right what ever that means ,labour are still run by the unions. the gimmy gimmy more of your money.. cigarette smokers are now so vilified even though they put 10 billion more in taxes into that black hole of freebies. its a disgrace. and my Grandad fought and my uncles in both wars small business folk who never claimed a penny. and would never vote for a socialist red flag flying party .think about it..and some uncles didnt come back. and my Grandad lost a leg in WW1 he was a tinsmith and had a small shop. he returned from war went back in his shop and made his own false leg . he died aged 46....

Patsy Nurse - I think we're on the same side in NuBritain JS.

JS - yes im sad I never met my Grandad or my Great uncle Ted ..bless them all those who fought and died . and those that fight today .. they do not fight and die for constraint on the British way of life,and our freedoms of thought.. our laws, our Country ,they fought for it , political correctness needs burying ..its not the smokers its the PC Brigade..what are these lot of marxist going to ban next.

Feel free while I'm away to debate why you've either switched your traditional party support, stuck with it, or are contemplating changing that support.

IT'S DIFFERENT FOR ...

Some things I'm itching to write about like re-educating Nigel Farage on the reality of homelessness and being a single parent or young parent, but they'll have to wait until I'm back from my trip.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with my favourite Joe Jackson song and the pro-choicer's common sense views on the best way to fight the anti-smoking bigotry that denormalises smokers.

No change

It is common to see commentators ascribe part of the decline of pubs to “stricter drink-driving laws”. There was an example only this week in the Daily Telegraph article by Rowan Pelling I referred to below. But, in reality, while there have been changes in equipment and procedures, there has been no change whatsoever in either the UK legal limit or police powers to carry out breath tests since the breathalyser law was introduced in 1967. Indeed, the ultimate high water mark of the British pub trade was reached twelve years after that in 1979.

What has changed, though, is public attitudes, with a growing reluctance to drive after drinking even within the legal limit. In the early years of the law, this was widely regarded as normal and responsible behaviour, and many suburban, village and rural pubs prospered on this “car trade”. However, from the mid-80s onwards, there has been a distinct shift towards the view that drivers shouldn’t touch so much as a half of lager, which has become commonplace amongst new entrants to the driving population.

There are still plenty of people from their mid-forties upwards who continue to do what they have always done, although their ranks are steadily being thinned by age, death and infirmity. But, amongst their younger counterparts, the kinds of people who in the 1970s would have routinely gone to the pub in the car and drink a couple of legal pints haven’t, by and large, found an alternative means to get there, they have simply stopped going in that kind of regular, moderate way (although they may still have a weekend blow-out). And this has, over the past two decades, been a major and ongoing cause of the continued decline of the pub trade.

Ironically, because of cutbacks in traffic policing, you’re probably less likely to be stopped and breathalysed now than at any time since 1967.

Let a thousand flowers bloom

There was a particularly nauseating piece in the Morning Advertiser recently proclaiming the virtues of “gastropubs” and arguing that they should be seen as a successful contemporary evolution of the pub trade.

The growing band of gastropubs represent a golden seam of excellence, a burgeoning carpet of flowers prospering in the fertile ground of increasing demand for a high-quality, pub-based dining experience.

Pass the sick bag, Alice!

There is nothing wrong with pubs serving food, and good food at that. But the essence of a pub surely is that it is a place for people to socialise over a drink, and there comes a point at which a food-led pub has gone so far down that particular route that it effectively ceases to be a pub at all. And the mere fact of declaring your establishment a “gastropub” is putting two fingers in the air to the history and tradition of pubs in this country. I’m firmly with Rowan Pelling here in believing that “gastro” has not enhanced the British pub but ruined it.

Cut to 2010, and my parents’ old pub has a smart new Barratt-style dining room glued on its side, and the epic-length menu offers “griddled peach and Parma ham tart [with] balsamic drizzle” at £6.50. No wonder gastro-pubs turn a profit – but where can punters go to nurse an honest pint?

Many former pubs have “evolved” into successful businesses of all kinds from wine warehouses to tanning salons. Others have found a new role as fancy restaurants – it’s just a pity they continue to masquerade as pubs when in reality they are no such thing.

A PAPER WITH GUTS

At last!

An actual mainstream newspaper that actually cares about its readership's views and not just moulding a news agenda.

The Daily Express has come out fighting for the right to leave the EU and it gives good and valid reasons for doing so.

Today's edition, for example, highlights the madness of the EU waste of cash.

EURO MADNESS

- £350,000 for a dog fitness and rehabilitation centre that was never built. Plans included developing a hydrotherapy system to “improve dogs’ wellbeing”

- £4.5m for a fleet of limousines for Euro-MPs in Strasbourg. Green Party estimates already show that travelling between and maintaining the European Parliament’s two buildings in Strasbourg and Brussels already costs European taxpayers £170m

- £13,500 to Tyrolean farmers to boost their “emotional connection with the landscape.” They were expected to become “more aware of their emotional reactions to it compared to their prevailing rational economic ones.”

- £4,300 on a “Europe Horse” to promote the EU to German children. A booklet was produced chronicling the cartoon animal’s trip from Germany to Brussels, meeting various EU figures along the way

- £763,000 for a golf course, hotel and spa whose guests include German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The platinum membership fee for the club is 1,100 euros per year

We've always known the EU was barmy but I personally find it offensive that the Eurocrats promote those who disagree with this political project of being mentally ill or plain and simple nutters.

I know which daily paper I'll be buying from now on.

Add to that the paper's stance on the economically damaging and socially dangerous tobacco display ban and it's obvious that The Daily Express is worthy of support because of its comment sense and courageous approach.

REPRESENTATION VERBODEN IN EUSSR

This is a classic example of EU democracy in action.

Note how Godfrey Bloom, the elected representative of the voter in Yorkshire, who wants him to speak up on their behalf, is escorted out by security because the EU does not like what he says.

The EU cares not about the people of Britain or any other country but only the members who enforce its rules in their own countries. I don't know who the English MEP is that is turning on his own constituency. I only know he is a traitor. He should stand for his voters - not for the privileged few in that tax payer funded room.

Those in that chamber don't have to be reminded that they work for us because they don't. We slave for them and there is nothing we can do about it. That English MEP doesn't care as long as he keeps drawing his fat salary, I'll bet.

Insults abound from the President and his cronies that UKIP is fascist and yet when a UKIP MEP returns the insult, he is thrown out. Surely only those that voted him in can evict him?

To misquote George Orwell, it seems all pigs are equal but some are most definitely more equal than others.

It is as well that the EU Parliament is reminded of the past so it does not follow the same path under the guise of new ideas, or new ways of thinking.

History should not be allowed to repeat. It's such a shame that what has become the EUSSR is incapable of accepting such criticism.

EU THREE RULE BRITANNIA

Nigel Farage is without doubt the best Prime Minister this country could have if only the voter would wake up and recognise that until we are out of the EU we have no British leader in anything other than name and appearances only.

David Cameron has about as much power as a parish council leader because thanks to NuLabour the last of our country has been given away and Dave is not bothered to get it back. He's happy playing leader knowing he doesn't have to make any real decisions as they are done for him by unelected president Herman Van Rompuoy.

We cannot even decide ourselves what laws are best for us or whether we can hold our own elections if Ireland is anything to go by. Dave just has to keep telling us to sshhh while telling the wider public that UKIP is a nutty party to ensure the voter stays compliant and uncomplaining.

In truth, he's just desperate to hide the fact that he has no power. Like Ireland, his "govt" is forced to attack the poor to keep the Eurocrats happy. Ireland, lets not forget, has been told it must cut welfare and the minimum wage among other things before the EU will let it hold it's own general election. A new party will change nothing. The EU has already decided for Ireland and she is not in control of her elections, laws, social or economic policy.

Our Govt can do nothing more than meddle in our private affairs to give it some kind of sense of being in authority. That's why it interferes with the little issues in our lives like what we eat, drink or smoke, because it cannot make the big decisions.

Those are made by van Rompuoy and the two other unelected officals - CND activist Baroness Ashton (NuLab) and a foreign chap few of us know called Barrosso. They are nameless, faceless, unaccountable officials and very dangerous for the cause of civil liberties. Our Govt is simply their enforcer.

Klaus Vaclas, president of the Czech Republic knows it too. His speech linked here is like an apology to his people that there is nothing he can do about encroaching EU control and power that aims to rob nation states of their cultures, identities, history and heritage.

As Nigel says, the suppression of national identity is what will lead to violence. Certainly it seems to me that if you enforce rules, regulations, and laws on people who have no avenue to hold an election to remove you if they don't like your ideology, then you are asking for long term unrest and trouble.

National elections currently don't matter. They are just a front. Nothing changes no matter what party gets voted in because the EU is the Govt and we cannot elect it. That's why all of the laws we hate so much will stay.

The smoking ban is one such example. We only have it because the EU insists. That is why Cameron makes no mention of it. He is too scared to let the British people know he has no power to change it so he brushes it under the carpet. Other countries don't enforce it as rigorously as Nanny Britain but they have it only because of the EU. Former unelected president Pottering was duped into it by the unelected EU SmokeFree Partnership director Florence Berteletti Kemp, who has no support from the public but merely heads an EU quango.

When the voter and their EU Parliament representatives wanted to meet in the alleged home of European democracy, they were banned from the Parliament building after one call from the unelected Ms Berteletti-Kemp. Just one example of how democracy does not work in Europe. That was when I woke up. A kick in the teeth tends to do that.

Free speech in the EU means you can say what you like but you will be ridiculed, condemned and slandered for it if the EU three don't agree. That's why UKIP has been criticised as "Little Englanders" or "Racists in Blazers". It's because the establishment is terrified that this new party of the people will be heard as more and more voters get wise to what is really going on. UKIP came second in the EU elections. It will do better than the Tories next time as disillusioned former Tories drift over to a party with guts and courage.

Van Rompuoy has tried to incite fear by claiming that without the EU state, individual nations would not survive. Of course we would. We have done for centuries and our friendships will remain unchanged.

What started as an avenue for trade with European friends and neighbours has become a huge multi-state state Govt that frowns on democracy. No one wanted this.

The only democratic thing about it is that we can vote in MEPs. They have no power, however, except that they can raise concerns and highlight the threat to democracy from the EU and the adverse effects its dominance has on British life.

Nigel is passionate and not afraid to speak his mind, like other UKIP MEPs but unlike Lib/Lab/Con party MEPs who appear to do no more than just nod agreements between naps as they let the EU dictators just get on with ripping Britain's soul out.

Some are just simply trainee MPs and career politicians like Nick Clegg who start in the EU parlt, keep their mouths shut, comply with all and everything they are told, and then get themselves a nice little earner as an MP in the castrated British Parliament when a seat becomes available.

There is only one way to end the EU oppression and rid ourselves of the conflicts that will come in a few years' time as rage rises in nation states and European economies implode. We must get out. That can only happen if UKIP is voted into the British Parliament. It desperately wants out of the EU and to stop paying the £120 billion we give to the Eurocrats but more than that it wants democracy back and wants the British people to decide their own future, their own economy, their own way of life, their own security, their own social policies, and their own laws.

The British people have never been asked how far they want to go towards cultural, military, economic and political integration via a referendum as is their right by constitution. The Lib/Lab/Con has continually denied them since 1973. Union with Europe was never supposed to be about three people who aim to remove power from national Govts. Isn't that what Hitler had in mind for Europe?

Polls show that 75% of British people want a say on whether we stay in the EU or come out. That 75% should vote UKIP in the next general election. Only by voting UKIP do they have any chance of getting a referendum and ending the tyranny that is the EU. Only by voting UKIP into the British Parliament can the people of this country begin to get control of their own lives back.

Other European countries feel exactly the same as we do. Once one country drops out of this hell, others will quickly back away too, and then go back to how they should be - proud of their own, tolerant of others, and able to make the decisions that the people and not the Eurocrats want.

Meanwhile it appears our elected representatives are not allowed to raise concerns about the way the the EU is run on our behalf