INDEED

There's a new kid on the blog and his first question is why are antis so anti-tobacco when it has been proved to have beneficial health qualities?

In, bloody, Deed!

Bigots!

RIP TONY CURTIS

I was sorry to hear of the death of actor Tony Curtis but surprised to hear he was a bit of an anti-smoker according to Michael Caine.

Caine tells of how Curtis once grabbed his fags and threw them in the fire after telling him he should quit for his health. I know how I would have reacted if he'd done that to me. I'd have told him he owed me a new pack.

It doesn't look as if my hero was too much of a puritanical arsehole though because according to Caine, he saw Curtis some years later having a good time while smoking cannabis.

Funny that. Marijuana has a much higher tar content that tobacco - although granted people might smoke less - and one would have thought the health zealots would have been well onto it by now.

But then perhaps they are

The death of passion

It’s reported that the Passionate Pub Company, a seven-strong pub operator in the North-East, has gone into liquidation after its bank RBS withdrew its support.

Passionate, which has traded since 1999, said it had been severely affected by the smoking ban, changes in the market with the move towards food sales, and price competition from supermarkets.

Are you listening, Gillian Merron? Probably not. What does she care now she’s lost her seat?

“It is hoped that the policy makers and the legislators can see the consequences of their actions on a beleaguered but important sector of the economy.”

Well, precisely. And will they?

On the same day, new Labour leader Ed Miliband expressed his support for pubs – but if his chief weapon is to increase off-trade prices, that is simply a blatant attack on the living standards of the less well-off. Who was it Labour was supposed to represent again? And it is an exercise in despicable hypocrisy when he supported the measure that has ripped the guts out of the pub trade, especially in working-class areas, over the past three years. I wonder if Ed has spent much time going round the pubs and clubs of Doncaster North asking ordinary drinkers why trade had fallen off a cliff.

The damning verdict of Mr Eugenides on his defeated brother is equally applicable to Ed.

Self-awareness

The various recent discussions about the Cask Report made me think how, during the lifetime of CAMRA, the market for real ale has been totally turned on its head, and the beer enthusiast has moved from observer to active participant. In the early 1970s, interest in real ale was almost an archaeological exercise. It was a declining product, produced by old-fashioned, stick-in-the-mud breweries, sold in grotty backstreet boozers and drunk by middle-aged and elderly working men. Keg beer, in contrast, was fresh, modern, youthful and glitzy. Of course that's a bit of an exaggeration, but still essentially true.

In the early days of CAMRA, many of its supporters felt that they were just marking the passing of an era, in the same way as steam locomotive buffs were. Possibly in the future there might be the occasional brewpub producing real ale on a cottage scale, a bit like a preserved steam railway, but no more than that.

However, it didn’t work out like that. The rise of CAMRA chimed with the popular “small is beautiful”, “Good Life” ethos of the 1970s, and before the end of the decade we were seeing new beers like Ind Coope Burton Ale being launched, the first micro-breweries springing up and multi-beer exhibition pubs starting to appear. As we know, this process has only intensified in the following decades.

This is not a bad thing – indeed in some ways it is a very good thing – but it means that the nature of the relationship between producer and consumer has fundamentally changed, and is far more interactive. Brewers and pub operators are far more aware of what their customers want, and responsive to their requirements. It is a very big change from basically exploring a static or declining field of interest. It is almost as if the National Trust, aware of a wide and growing interest in stately homes, had suddenly decided to start building new ones. But that wouldn’t by any means be greeted with universal joy. And God doesn’t make any new birds for twitchers.

While the steam locomotive analogy only goes so far, you could regard the construction of the Tornado as an example of producing an “enthusiasts’ special” that takes railway preservation beyond the mere role of being a custodian of the past. But of course even that is only the equivalent of recreating 1940s Draught Bass rather than creating something entirely new.

And now, ironically, the joy of unexpectedly unearthing the past is more likely to come from visiting an obscure working men’s club and finding on the bar an 80s-style font for a keg beer you thought had disappeared twenty years ago, or finding one of the last pubs still dispensing cask beer by electric meters.

ASH LIARS SHOULD BE PROSECUTED

WANTED FOR LYING AND INCITING HATRED. Deborah Arnott of the discredited Big Pharma owned organisation ASH UK.

So the huge drain on public resources that is the astoundingly bigoted organisation ASH is yet again spouting lies about smokers - this time in a bid to make them unemployable.

This comes from an organisation that depends on tax payers money and Big Pharma money or it couldn't survive. It is a well documented fact that the public does not support this group or it's hate mongering. Donations from the public amount to £11,000 a year and my guess is that comes in from the swivel eye paranoid freaks who are not representative of what the great British public wants and are very much in the minority but Nanny Nulab gave them a big voice with our cash and dismissed dissenting voices. We were not even asked during selective consultation that only asked... errr ... anti-smoking charities and orgs dependant upon the persecution of smokers for their income.

What most honest Brits hate are liars. ASH's bleating untruths about the smoking ban has led to the legalisation of exclusion and discrimination but that's not enough for them. The hypocrites pretend to "care" about "the poor" who they say are too thick to speak up for themselves and too stupid to know what's bad for them so they need the bigots at ASH to "protect" them. This ASH argues, will lead them to live to be 200 years old safely in the poverty that makes them proper miserable while fat Debs at ASH and her over paid chubby chums in Scotland and Ireland get even fatter on our money.

Yes, it seems they care about "the poor" so much they want to tell even more lies to ensure they never get work again, starve to death on the streets, probably. ASH's so-called "caring" will then be exposed as they celebrate hounding smokers out of their jobs, their homes and onto the streets, because of telling lies like smokers spend too much time having fag breaks.

Before this piece of filth was put out by ASH, readers of this blog would have read how I don't smoke at work because I'm just too busy. I don't have time to go outside. ASH wants people to believe we are pathetic addicts like those on heroin and we can't do a morning's or afternoon's work without a fag. Wrong. So Wrong and if these twats knew anything about smoking, they would know it's wrong ... but hang on... of course they do but it doesn't matter. That doesn't fit their hate agenda.

What legal activity I or any other smoker does in our own time is no business of ASH, or our employers. It is our business. And besides, didn't we used to have legal breaks for 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in the afternoon? I wouldn't know. I've never taken these breaks since about 1981 when I worked for British Rail. Perhaps NuLabour stripped the working class of this right as well as many others hard fought for by the working classes that the party despises.

I wonder how much time the greedy bigots at ASH spend surfing the net, booking their smoke-free holidays, visiting social network sites like Facebook, on Twitter, or simply stuffing their fat faces with chocolate or satisfying their Caffeine addiction with coffee

Of course this kind of hate propaganda spouted by ASH is what they intended all along and it appears to be working judging by what Leg Iron has to say about revolting comments on the story of smokers and working breaks elsewhere on the internet.

These people at ASH should be prosecuted. If they spread these kind of lies in a bid to get an ethnic, gender or sexuality minority sacked from work, then they would rightly face the wrath of our courts for inciting hatred.

Smokers are people too. We work hard. We have put up with too much from this lying shower. When will we be treated as equal in our own country and when will these bigots be brought to account for their lies?

My guess is when we finally get a Govt in this country that really does care about people and NuTory and ilLiberal Demotwat it's not.

I guess there's nothing for it. Vote UKIP with hope and when all else fails kill yourself rather than face the poverty, hate and discrimination that Govt is legislating for and ASH is planning for those it despises - smokers.

I wonder if the fat twats at ASH have been promised nice personal bonuses if they give it a final push and get more money for Big Pharma through forcing us all to use their ineffective nicotine replacement products. I really wouldn't be surprised as nothing else they say makes sense. And I should know. I am an expert on smoking. I've done it all of my life.

We in the Blogosphere have a record of being able to raise cash when it's needed. Does anyone know how much a private prosecution would cost against Deborah Arnott and her anti-smoker haters? Do we have any criminal lawyers in this movement willing to donate some time?

I am sure there are a myriad of charges we can raise including inciting hatred against a minority group, fraud, causing alarm, harassment and distress, offensive behaviour, anti-social behaviour ... oooh ... there's loads of criminal charges she should face but the point is can we do it and how?

WHO SAYS SMOKER BABIES ARE SMALL?

Anna Racoon has written a very amusing piece about puritan health freak Jamie Oliver's new baby.

Anna rightly pokes fun at the celebrity couple giving this poor child a stupid name as idiotic as his sisters. Yes, I'm sure they'll love their parents for that one day.

The birth didn't pass my notice but I was only interested for one reason. For all Oliver's sanctimonious lecturing to others on how to be "good" parents when it comes to feeding them the kind of shite they don't want, I'm sure his health paranoia must also make him anti-smoking.

Well you know what, Oliver, for all your puritanical, health zealotry, my second baby when born was bigger than yours who came in at a mere 6lbs 9oz.

I had the most stressful time of my life during my second pregnancy and my smoking reflected that. I was on 80 cigarettes A DAY and you know what, she came in at 7lbs 12oz. My biggest baby. Who says smokers have smaller babies? oh yes, that's right, the lying anti-smoker bigots who will do and say anything their Big Pharma paymasters tell them to say to encourage hatred, fear and prejudice against smokers.

As this example shows, this kind of health hype just isn't true - unless of course Jools has secretly been puffing on 100 cigs a day without us knowing. Somehow I think if that had been the case, then it might have given podgy Oliver a heart attack!

He really should watch his step. Nanny Obese will coming for him before too long.

HISTORY REPEATING

Perhaps daytime TV viewers can enlighten me further on a story I heard today from the brain dead numb skulls that put my gender to shame - Loose Women.

I'm told that this morning, one of the presenters was trying to incite hatred against lifestyle groups after the finger wagging antis came up with yet another stupid idea to get people to stop smoking and eat healthily. Pay 'em with taxpayers' money.

One of these women reportedly said that "smokers should be lined up against the wall and shot because they are killing themselves anyway." Whoever it was should be reported to the Broadcasters Standard Agency. It's disgusting that main stream TV companies can incite such violence against a minority group!

It looks like those bigots on the programme have outed one of their members and then shamed her into quitting. I feel sorry for her. They have just forced her into a 60% greater chance of getting lung cancer

If it is true that the presenter of that awful show did say this, then she deserves to go into Dick Puddlecote's Bigot Bin . Sorry I can't find a direct link to it. I know DP is currently compiling a list of all those anti-smoker comments urging death and murder to their fellow human beings.

To my friends, family and colleagues I say, if it truly came to lining up smokers and shooting them, would you stop them? Would you still stay silent because you despise the smell of smoke and believe the worst of what is told to you about smoking?

I know we are not Jews. I know smokers are thought of as lesser people and we have no right to claim to be a group. I know that what happened in Nazi Germany was one of the worst ever human atrocities - but it still happened to people whatever their tag because inhumane and bigoted people didn't like them - the look of them, the smell of them, their habits religious or otherwise, their lifestyles.

Somewhere at the beginning of that tragedy, which is such a relatively short time ago, was a Loose Women type person saying that Jews could choose not to be Jews and killing them was probably doing them a favour anyway.

Have we learned nothing? Why is the state encouraging this bigotry? I truly despair.

And this is worth a look. H/T Timbone

Extending the repertoire

Yesterday, the latest edition of the Cask Report, written by Pete Brown, was published. Broadly speaking, this gives a positive message for cask ale, with volumes remaining steady in the context of an overall decline in on-trade beer sales, and thus recording a gain in market share. This was the first time cask volumes had not shown a year-on-year decline since 1994, which is especially impressive given the very difficult general climate for the pub trade. Unlike pretty much anything else they offer, cask beer is the one thing you can only get in pubs, clubs and bars. This has already been dealt with in general terms by other bloggers such as Tandleman, Hardknott Dave and Pete Brown himself.

Two points sprang out, though. The first is that only 18% of people who drink cask beer sometimes, claim to drink it regularly. Clearly this provides an opportunity to increase sales by encouraging people to drink it more often, but it also underlines the point that, for many people, cask beer is just one element in their repertoire of drinking. Cask drinkers are also more likely to experiment in the fields of wine and spirits. There isn’t the Manichean divide between cask drinkers and keg/lager drinkers often portrayed by some voices in CAMRA. So generic condemnations of lager and “chemical fizz” may end up not “converting” people, but putting them off. If you want to encourage someone to try something, but make out that what he’s currently drinking or eating is rubbish, you are in effect implying he’s a fool.

The report also highlights the association between offering cask beer and a more affluent customer profile. Long gone are the days when it was the working man’s pint – that, if anything, is now Carling and Stella. But you have to be careful not to put the cart before the horse. Simply putting cask in a crappy downmarket pub won’t suddenly get middle-class drinkers flocking in. There’s a strong association between affluent areas and Waitrose stores, but you won’t regenerate Beswick by putting a Waitrose store in the middle of it. In many pubs, there may be the potential to introduce cask, or increase the cask offer, but you have to weigh it up carefully and take your customers with you.

Pete is also absolutely right to emphasise the quality issue – there is no point in offering cask beer if you can’t keep it properly, and a few poor pints will put people off drinking it in general. Warm, flat, hazy beer should be completely unacceptable.

Mircea Eliade

Mircea Eliade was a Romanian historian of religion, fiction writer, philosopher, and professor at the University of Chicago.

The heyday of pubs

I cut my drinking teeth in the late 1970s, a period that surely will come to be seen as the all-time heyday of the British pub. Annual on-trade beer sales exceeded 37 million bulk barrels (over 10 billion pints), a post WWI record, and more than two and a half times the current level. And the pub trade had achieved a level of acceptance and respectability that it never did in the previous boom period of the late 19th century when the temperance movement was still an active force (which it of course now is again). Drinking in pubs had become a normal part of everyday life, something most people did from time to time. I remember my father saying to elderly aunts “it’s OK to go in pubs now, they serve food”.

It has been suggested that on this point I am looking at the past through rose-tinted spectacles. Now, I recognise that back then the range of beer and food was often much more limited, poor cask beer was commonplace, many pubs had a sense of entitlement that led to a “take it or leave it” attitude to service, a cliquish, unwelcoming atmosphere could often be encountered, and there was a whole stratum of dirty, grotty bottom-end pubs that has now largely disappeared.

But it is a matter of recorded fact that pubs were shifting vastly more beer in those days, and so thus demonstrably far more popular than they are now. My subjective memory is also that going to the pub for a drink was, for far more people, a routine everyday activity. Apart from town-centre redevelopments, and areas of inner-urban depopulation, pub closures were virtually unknown.

Today, there are still some thriving and busy pubs, although a lot fewer than there once were, and the best pubs are in many respects well ahead of their counterparts of thirty years ago. But it is all too obvious that much of the pub trade is now scratching along on very thin pickings, and equally obvious that pubs in general have lost a lot of their broad social acceptability. I am struggling to think of the last occasion I went in a pub (except on a Friday night) and couldn’t find anywhere to sit. The last job I had where it was commonplace to go to the pub at lunchtime at least one day a week I left in 1988.

Middle-class people may eat enthusiastically in dining pubs, but you just don’t see them drinking in pubs in the way they once would. I vividly recall an occasion in the early 80s when my father and I went in a pub in one of the better-off parts of Cheshire, and encountered a gang of “golf club types” standing around the bar sounding off about the latest BMW models and Poppy’s gymkhana results. It wasn’t one of my most enjoyable pub experiences, but you rarely see it now. Drinking – and I mean drinking – in pubs has morphed from the staid and respectable to Mark Dredge’s realm of misbehaviour. It has become, to some extent, denormalised.

And, however good individual pubs may be nowadays, I make no apology for looking back nostalgically to the days when pubs as a whole were doing two and a half times the business, when there were half as many of them again, and when visiting them just for a drink was a core part of national life rather than something peculiar and vaguely antisocial done by oldsters, oddballs, students and drunks.

Music to whose ears?

Piped music in pubs used to be a perennial source of complaint, but I don’t recall mentioning it once since the creation of this blog. However, the other day I was in quite a traditional pub where dance-style music (possibly Radio 1) was being played at considerable volume. The average age of the customers was well over 50, so I doubt whether that would be their favoured listening, but the bar staff were all, by the looks of it, under 25. So no prizes for guessing who chose the radio station. But surely, if there is to be piped music at all, it should match the preferences of the customers, not the bar staff. “AOR Hits of the 80s” will do me nicely, thank you very much. It was a frequent complaint in the days of jukeboxes, that the staff could override customer selections and impose their own choice of music.

One of the big plus points of the main Wetherspoons chain (although not Lloyds No.1 Bars) is that they don’t have any piped music.

The Good Guide Guide

Prompted by this post on Mark Dredge’s blog, I ran a poll asking whether people bought the Good Beer Guide. There were 77 responses, broken down as follows:

Every year: 17 (22%)
Every two or three years: 7 (9%)
Occasionally: 3 (4%)
I have an old copy I still use: 5 (6%)
I once bought one but have long since lost it: 6 (8%)
Never bought one: 39 (51%)

Obviously quite a lot of readers of this blog aren’t real ale drinkers, so you would expect “never bought one” to be the biggest category. However, the second highest is those who buy one every year. Although far from CAMRA’s cheerleader-in-chief, I have in fact bought every single copy since 1978, and I always regret throwing away the 1978 edition, which was the last to use “blobs” to identify beers rather than actually naming them in the pub entries.

I was a little surprised that Mark didn’t see much point in buying it. However, the main reason people buy it, I suspect, is not that they are fanatical beer geeks or tickers, but they uses it as a guide to pubs worth visiting when on holiday, away on business or out on day trips. It is, in effect, not so much a beer guide as a more down-to-earth version of the Good Pub Guide. To this end, from a personal point of view it always seems a waste of entries to include working men’s clubs, and some branches do have a habit of including too many pubs in obscure suburban locations that in practice, in comparison with town-centre or rural pubs, very few Guide users are likely to visit.

I have a 2006 copy of the Good Pub Guide which I bought off eBay, but I have to say that, while it does list some of what I would regard as “good” pubs, to a large extent it is for me a guide to establishments to avoid.

And, while I accept that some Wetherspoons do serve very good beer in terms of both quality and choice, it always seems something of an admission of defeat when the only pub listed in a town is the local Spoons, which in the 2011 Guide is the case, for example, in both my twin home towns of Runcorn and Widnes. The menu and general pubgoing experience are always much the same, and you can easily find them on Spoons’ website.

Really, I want it to unearth places that I might not come across by chance – such as the Black Horse at Clapton-in-Gordano which no tourist would ever find unless they already knew it was there. Some years ago I was staying in Taunton, which is a very poor town for pubs, and the Guide led me to the Masons Arms, a characterful independently-run free house tucked away behind the main street, sadly now closed. Another excellent Somerset pub you would never find by chance is the Crown at Churchill just off the A38. It’s coming across places like that that make it worth paying the cover price for.

Drunk and orderly

There’s an excellent article here from The Spectator (oddly uncredited) pointing out how the crackdown on underage drinking in pubs has ended making our alcohol problems worse, not better.

...pubs have become no-go zones for those who inhabit the purgatorial zone between childhood and adulthood. And that’s a disaster, because it was traditionally in pubs that young people learned how to handle their drink. In the grown-up world of the boozer, teenagers were taught adult skills: how to conduct themselves socially, how to converse with other adults, how to flirt and how to drink in a way that wasn’t embarrassing. No amount of alcohol training by the Red Cross can replace that informal education of old.

Of course, this is only what Tim Martin has been saying for years.

Inevitably, in the current climate, the answer will not be a bit more encouragement to turn a blind eye in pubs, but a further counterproductive crackdown in the off-trade. Tesco are doing it right, it would seem.

BONUS!

My other half is currently running me about because I've lent my car to daughter No 2 for a while. I can't drive his so he's taking me where I need to go and loiters for a bit while he waits for me to finish the job.

I was in a magistrates court the other day and there were only a couple of petty cases left by lunchtime so I decided to leave and get back to my office. The reporter from the other paper that covers the court left before I did because he was so unimpressed by the list and the amount of time it was taking the bench to deal with each case.

My other half was talking to some chap as I came out of court and into the waiting room and he said : "You're in luck, mate." A broad smile flashed across the defendant's face as he turned to face me.

"Are you a reporter?" he said.

"Errr, yes," I replied.

"Are you coming back?"

"Err, no"

"Is the other chap?"

"Err no."

His smile got even broader.

"Bonus!" he said. "You always think you say the right things in court until you read it in the paper and your mates take the piss."

It got me thinking about this job and why I do it. I guess it's the equivalent of putting someone in the stocks. A factual court report is the modern form of public humiliation and sometimes it is the only punishment some defendants get. Some deserve it, some don't, there seems to be no real fairness about who gets it.

This bloke, like many others, is not scared of what magistrates are going to do to him. He has no fear of the system.

"I can handle prison, a fine, anything, but I fucking hate it when my name gets in the paper," he said.

He was there because he'd spat in a policeman's face. He said he was going to plead not guilty. My reporting would have been restricted.

Some defendants will do anything not to be in the paper. The other reporter told me how a defendant once ran off with his notebook to avoid the possibility. Unfortunately for the defendant, the security officer got it back.

Nulabour took the fear of public humiliation away with their fanatical legal cost cutting measures which resulted in fixed penalties being imposed instead of a court appearance.

Was it about "justice" or was it more to do with the court closure programme and getting rid of work? We had many courts in Lincolnshire in small and big towns and thanks to Nulab they've all been shut. Now there are fewer courts and fewer defendants but I'm sure it's not because crime is going down.

A PUB THAT NEEDS SMOKERS

This pub landlord obviously needs smokers and he must think this sign will draw them in. It made me look twice.

I noticed it while walking about Skegness in my lunch half hour yesterday. I would have gone in if I'd had time. We smokers are definitely in the majority in the town and this landlord wants to offer us hospitality if only he could - especially today as it chucked it down.

There's no sight more miserable than a collection of all sorts of people on holiday in a grey, wet, and seaside town huddled in doorways and under canopies. Some had pushchairs and wheelchairs as they sheltered. Most people were smoking, some were not.

Outdoor restaurant, cafe, and pub tables, all with ashtrays filling rapidly with rain, were empty but are usually full on nice days. Non-smokers are now more exposed to smoke than ever before because of this ridiculous ill thought out law.

People who hate smoke have to walk through smokers to get to the door of these establishments, they walk among smokers on the street, smoke is everywhere. We cannot choose to be segregated from them nor they from us. We have to mix. We cannot choose to take up the hospitality that the landlord would like to offer us while they take up the hospitality of one who wouldn't.

I haven't met any anti-smokers during my short time in Skegness but judging from an early summer headline I've seen, the town has had problems with "filthy" litter from smokers and resolves to "get tough".

I mentioned to my newsdesk that it would be great to have a positive litter campaign of awareness and promotion of pocket ashtrays, rather than the heavy hammer of an official threat that starts from the "filthy smoker" stance.

The real culprit is not smokers but the smoking ban. If smokers could go inside and use the ashtrays provided for them by the business owners who want to provide them,then there would be no litter on the street. But when I looked in town today, I didn't see the problem.

Bins and street ashtrays are provided and they are used. Those fag ends that I did see in the street were starting to degrade they were so old. I also saw the odd plastic bottle, chip tray, and drink can here and there too. Litter is litter. Why should it have special significance because a smoker dropped it?

Incidentally, I don't go out for fag breaks while at work. I'm not a "pathetic addict" you see. I just simply don't have time and this week has been hell hence the lack of posts yesterday.

Divided we fall

Some very wise words here from Jeremy Beadles of the Wine & Spirit Trade Association on the need for the drinks trade to speak with one voice.

On duty he “would like some tax freezes please”. But what of other critical issues, such as ways of tackling cheap off-trade alcohol?

Surely this is a tricky one for the head of a group that represents producers (including brewers such as Fuller’s and St Austell) alongside retail giants Tesco and Sainsbury’s.

“I think there’s a perception about cheap alcohol and some of it is not real,” he starts. “It is still a damn sight cheaper to buy alcohol in most of continental Europe than it is here.”

So youngsters pre-loading before hitting the pubs is a myth? According to Beadles, ‘pre-loading’ is not the issue some would have you believe.

“When you look at the level of pre-loading most people only have one or two drinks before they go out, so they are not blasted,” he says.

“There’s a small proportion who are, but does that mean we have to regulate the entire industry, the entire population – or should we find a different route?”

On that subject, Beadles is adamant minimum pricing is most definitely not the way to go. As well as, in his view, probably being illegal, it is also “simply about making alcohol too expensive for poor people to buy it”.

As I’ve often said before, the anti-drink lobby don’t care if you’re drinking in the pub or at home, they don’t care if you’re drinking Jaipur IPA or Carling, all they care is that you’re drinking at all. If different sections of the drinks trade start squabbling with each other and claiming the moral high ground, the only winners will be the neo-Prohibitionists.

Strange logic

There’s a rather strange line of reasoning here from Neil Robertson of the British Institute of Innkeeping, who argues that the pub trade must avoid being seen as an industry that relies on drink-drivers.

“We can not present ourselves as the suppliers of drink drivers,” warned Robertson.

“If we say hundreds of country pubs will shut, we are basically saying that we rely on and supply those people who drink and drive.

“We need to be more positive and stress that most of our customers are responsible and we are not worried about them drink driving.”

If by “people who drink and drive” he means drink-drive offenders, then those are people who are breaking the current law anyway, and realistically I would doubt whether any pubs are critically dependent on the trade of those who fall into that category.

But, in reality large numbers of people do visit pubs by car and drink alcohol, whether or not with a meal, within the current legal limit – in most cases well within it. If those are, in his terms “people who drink and drive”, then large swathes of the pub trade are dependent on their business. This is an entirely lawful activity and if industry representatives are not prepared to say so they are conceding the argument to the opposition. Clearly, if the limit was cut, most of those people would either drink less or not bother going at all (or less often) which inevitably would have an adverse effect on the business of pubs. As with the smoking ban, though, it would be a slow and long-drawn-out erosion of trade, not a sudden one off hit.

In fact, the vast majority of people err on the side of caution and in practice limit themselves to an amount of alcohol that would leave them well below the current limit. If you have a go at the blood-alcohol calculator on RUPissed you might be surprised at how much you need to drink to take you over 80mg – but in reality very few deliberately aim to drink up to the limit, as is often alleged.

Oliver Robinson of Robinson’s brewery talks much more sense on the subject in pointing out that a limit reduction would decimate many pubs’ early-doors trade.

PUBS NEED SMOKERS!

It seems smoking is a dirty word these days so playing the antis at their own game by changing language seems a fair method of getting some balance back into society and a bit of freedom for those currently oppressed by Nanny Britain.

Yes, I'm all for Freedom Rooms. It sounds a great idea.

They should have a big sign outside saying "it is against the law to invade this space with the stench of anti-smoker righteousness" but that may not happen as it appears anti-smokers are too dumb and mentally incapable of avoiding places where smokers go.

I'd like it all in my Freedom Room, please. A cup of tea and a smoke, a Lincolnshire sausage bap if one's going, live music and a juke box, food because it tastes so much better when a meal is finished off with a fag, and ventilation so that we can have it all. A safe, fun place to socialise with our own kind.

The antis can stick their dark and gloomy BO, perfume, gum, beer, and dusty stinky hell holes where the sun won't shine. They can then be happy once again, moaning that they haven't got the whole world to themselves.

Meanwhile, download this poster and take it to your local landlord.

He or she will already know that Pubs Need Smokers because research tells us that smokers use pubs more than anti-smokers. After all, the puritans are terrified of anything that isn't organic, fair trade, or certified "safe" by Nanny so they really wouldn't miss out.

And while I'm on the subject of intolerance, it's great to see the Medway Hitler Youth have backed away from their obnoxious (sorry Obo)campaign aimed at inciting hatred and violence against smokers.

THE UNELECTABLES

Could things be finally turning in the favour of common sense and fair play?

Pete Robinson over at The Publican says :

'With ASH withering on the vine, the LibDems are the only hurdle to overcome before sanity is restored."

I don't think we will have to suffer these ilLiberal Demotwats much longer as it happens. Cleggy is riding on a wave of self-important egotism and he is blind to the fact that the Tories are giving him enough rope to hang himself and his party before the next election.

It's issue on the stance of Freedom of Choice, Cleggy's clanger of mentioning a hugely popular amendment to the smoking ban in the same breath as the death penalty, and the Party's false promises on the scam that is the "Freeeeedom Bill" will ensure that they will take massive strides backwards and become as unelectable as Nulabour unless they stop dismissing the feelings of 25% of this country.

They just don't get it although coun Carl Minns does. He shows that there are very rare nuggets of common sense and decency among the ilLiberal ranks. It's a shame there are so few tolerant and fair members in that party. It could have offered real hope to so many who are looking for someone and something to believe in.

Cleggy sold the party's soul for five years playing mummies and daddies with Cameron in no 10. My own opinion is that he will live to regret it.

WHO GUIDELINES KILL 3rd WORLD ECONOMY

"The proposal risks decimating growers' livelihoods, condemning millions to a life of poverty and crippling the economies of many developing countries - the very same countries the WHO is funded to help.

"You have to wonder whether the authors of these guidelines understand what they are doing," says Antonio Abrunhosa, CEO of the ITGA. "One minute they tell you that with or without ingredients, all cigarettes are equally harmful; the next they go and ban one variety and not the other. How can that stop people from smoking? All it will do is send the economies of countries that rely on tobacco export crashing, along with millions of farmers and workers whose livelihoods depend on growing tobacco."

well said

GET A LIFE

Browsing the internet today I came across this little nugget on Facebook encouraging hatred of a minority group and falsifying illness and irritation when around smokers.

It's called Coughing when you walk by smokers and hope they get the message

The group description reads: "Don't you just love it when you walk by someone smoking and all of the sudden you break out coughing? Maybe they'll get the message. SMOKING IS BAD!"


I joined the thing to leave a comment and check it out and found that it is full of the same kind of faking bigots. They scream that they are being murdered by smokers when they are not affected at all - but pretend to be. There are also lots of spammers advertising iphones on the group page so one can only hope that this group is not taken too seriously, and it's message of hate and intolerance does not spread too far.

I really didn't think that humans who pretend to "care" about people could sink so low. Even if by some miracle they really do want to be sure that smokers they've never met will live to be 100, then maybe they should get better informed about smoking and health.

Anyone who cares to go to the evidence, and not just believe what is spoon fed to a compliant media through self interest group press release, will know that it is more dangerous for lifelong smokers to quit.

The stupid and grotesquely immature chiiildren who set up this page need to grow up, get a life, and stop telling those who know better how to live theirs.

Meanwhile, I'm still hopeful that one day this NuGovt will actually stop giving state backing to such hatred and intolerance. According to Damien Green, tolerance and freedom of choice is the British way.

It's about time we British smokers saw some of it.

The credibility gap

Quite amazingly, Sir Peter North, who was responsible for the report proposing the reduction of the UK drink-drive limit, has admitted in evidence to the House of Commons Transport Committee that he had no information about what must be the crucial factor in looking at the issue:

Asked if he’d seen evidence from police records of how many accidents are caused by drivers whose blood/alcohol level is between 50mg and 80mg, North replied: “It’s not something that was made available to me.

“My own judgment is that we don’t need that sort of evidence to bring the limit down.”

So, effectively, he’s saying that he thinks we should be making policy on a basis of unsubstantiated gut feeling. Surely before legislating on such an important matter, something that would potentially have a devastating effect on the pub trade, it is absolutely essential that the proposals are founded on firm evidence, and there is confidence that they will be effective in improving safety.

GO COMPARE

And while I'm on the subject of great posts, I'll just say I hate Go Compare for what it's doing to me!

H/T Anna Racoon.

GOOD READS AND LIGHT BLOGGING

I have a bit of this today so I'll link to some other great posts instead.

By way of update on the horrendous Ciggy Bastards - err - Busters campaign, this post from the Filthy Engineer sums it up nicely.

And this post by a real, proper and unbiased doctor PHIL BUTTON should be read by everyone in Govt or with a link to those in Govt. It is an education.

Anyway, I'm off. I'm inspired by Leg Iron's news so I'm working hard on getting my script out this week. Hopefully it will result in similar good news but I'm prepared for the fact that it could take a while.

Meanwhile, if any writers among you, including Mrs P whose other half keeps this excellent blog have time to read it, and give me feedback on it before it goes, I'd be very grateful.

AWFUL

I read this awful news today and so forgive me for using it as a reality check to measure the paranoia of anti-smokers.

They haven't yet got their way on a car smoke ban for the sake of the "chiiildren" but they are pushing ever further with the excuse that smoking in cars kills (insert massive number for dramatic and persuasive affect) each year.

The awful truth is that driving cars is far more risky than smoking in them as the tragic story above shows. Should we, therefore, be tarred as child abusers because we smoke in them? Are we child abusers because we don't choose safer modes of transport like walking, flying, or taking the train?

Each time we get in our vehicles and set off an a journey we are putting our lives and those of our children in danger . Even if we take the greatest care.

The smoking in cars issue should be put into perspective. Most parents err on the side of good manners when children are present. Most of mine have never minded my smoking with the window open - I've asked them. Daughter number one did. She's always hated smoking. She's very tolerant. I'm very polite. We don't have a problem.

In wider society, this used to be called good manners and tolerance and we worked it out between us to the benefits of both sides.

We didn't throw public money legalised discrimination, humiliation dehumanisation and denormalisation to take sides.

What we're paying for in anti-smoker costs panders to hysteria. Their claim that smoking should be banned in cars, and in the home, defies logic and encourages prejudices. It doesn't save lives. Second hand smoke does not kill.

There are greater causes than the anti-smoking issue to fight and real tragedies that deserve our sympathy.

The calls for a smoking ban in cars, in more public places and even people's homes is not about health. It's about spite, hate, prejudice, and paranoid fear.

Will this coalition government continue to waste money on the non-health issue or will it begin to invest in some of those really expensive projects like Hobhole Drain that really would benefit the public and really save lives?

Why am I not hopeful that this trendy NuGovt will get it's priorities right?


UPDATE
The awful story above about the new born baby orphaned when her parents died in a car accident just gets worse

Who reads this anyway?

A couple of weeks ago, I made the comment that “I always picture most of the readers of this blog as middle-aged blokes.” A commenter suggested I set up a survey to analyse the readership and demonstrate whether or not this was true, so I did. This has now closed, and with 102 responses it seems I have been proven right.

The age and gender breakdown was as follows:

Female under 35: 6 (6%)
Female aged 35-54: 2 (2%)
Female 55 or over: 3 (3%)
Male under 35: 18 (18%)
Male aged 35-54: 46 (45%)
Male 55 or over: 27 (26%)

So, not unsurprisingly, a strong male bias (89%), and a strong weighting towards the over 35s (76%). I think the male predominance is typical of pretty much every general discussion forum on the Internet, and I suppose quality beer is one of the finer things in life you only come to appreciate after the first flush of youth.

Hiding your light

There’s a thread on the CAMRA forum started by the indefatigable Richard English entitled “Some pubs don’t deserve to succeed”. And, regrettably, even in this marketing-savvy age, too many fall down on the basics of promoting themselves. I have written before about how pubs fail to advertise what is on offer within, which in locations where there is pedestrian footfall and a choice of venues, is crucial to bringing customers in.

I recently found myself in an attractive little Borders market town around lunchtime. It’s not a prime tourist trap, but clearly somewhere that does attract a fair number of visitors. There are six pubs on the main street, some remarkably attractive half-timbered buildings. One, although clearly still trading, wasn’t open at 12.15, another was closed and boarded and up for sale. Of the other four, two made no mention outside of offering food at all, one had a blackboard saying “see menu inside” and the fourth clearly had menus set out on the tables inside, although not displayed by the door.

From the general look of it, I chose the fourth, and went in and ordered a (somewhat lacklustre) pint. I picked up a menu and went to the bar to order, only to be told that, because of a flood in the kitchen, they weren’t serving food. The barmaid recommended a café-bar down the street, which as it turned out provided a perfectly decent light lunch, and also – surprisingly – had a handpump serving real ale, although that wasn’t very good either.

Surely it is basic common sense that if you are serving food, you display a menu outside and indicate the times during which food is served. And if you’re not serving food, how much effort does it take to write a notice saying “No food today” and stick it on the door?

Incidentally, the entry for the one Good Beer Guide pub in the town, which is just off the town centre, says bluntly “No food”. While I’m not naming names, the picture will give you a good clue as to where it was - looks wonderful, doesn’t it?

Doomed

Across much of the South-West, Sharp’s Doom Bar seems to be the current cask beer of choice to put on the bar. If any pub wants to do something just a little bit “different”, Doom Bar seems to be the beer they go for first. The brewery must have some very good salesmen, because I have to say I find it one of the dullest brown beers around, with nothing distinctive or memorable about it at all beyond a generic “beery” flavour. Other bloggers such as Tandleman have commented on this before. Butcombe would be infinitely preferable, and to be honest I’d personally much rather have a pint of Courage Best.

It also seems to be very likely to crop up in the kind of pub where it ends up being served just a bit too warm, and with just a slight haze on it, which can’t do its reputation any good. The last example I had in the North-West fell into exactly that category.

BUGGER!

There was me thinking I'd got a great story this week but I should have guessed that by the time Skegness got its pants on the story had already been half way around the world and back.

I have a really good contact with a local depression group and so when the organiser told me he'd been sent two "patients" from a German soft toy maker's Asylum Range, I thought it was a cracker that I'd send to my favourite contact at the Sun.

I asked her to hold it until my paper had published and she responded by telling me it had already been in the nationals all last week. Bugger! Did I feel daft.

I can't find a link to any of these stories on google so I'll use my own here because it is still a great yarn.

Soft toys with a mental illness have been donated to a Skegness group by a German toymaker who believes his "patients" can help those suffering from depression and disorders.
A hippo with obsessive compulsive disorder and a turtle with depression are part of the Paraplush firm’s Asylum range and they have been donated to the Depression Support Group Lincolnshire based in Skegness.
Paraplusch makes toys with a variety of mental health issues. The hippo can’t help but try to constantly solve a jigsaw puzzle with little or no attention to the outside world and the turtle looks very glum.
Martin Kittsteiner is the creator of the toys. He said the idea came to him after making a joke about it with his girlfriend. He says that both children and grown-ups are attracted to the vulnerability of the toys, and that adults especially see it as therapeutic for themselves.
He sent two toys to Skegness after support group organiser James Hardaker wrote to him after a group forum user brought the story to everyone’s attention - and now two of these unique toys will be used to raise funds for the group.
"These are about £25 each to buy, so we’re really grateful to Martin for the kind donation. Personally I think the toys are great, and I’d love to see more entrepreneurs taking such an active interest in mental health."
Other "patients" in the range include a psychedelic snake called Sly who has issues with inner conflict which can be interpreted as a sign of an ambivalent relationships towards his own body, Dolly who seems to temporarily suffer from the delusion that she is a wolf despite the fact that she is without a doubt a sheep, and Kroco a crocodile whose hypersensitive hallucinatory perception is a symptom of a paranoid psychosis.
For more information about Paraplusch go to http://www.parapluesch.de/ and for the Depression Support Lincolnshire group check out http://www.depressionlincolnshire.co.uk/index.htm

Such constant bad luck with news stories and features is one of the reasons why I want to change from being a news and feature writer to a script and fiction writer. At least those stories I make up from my own imagination are original and less likely to have been done before.

Maybe the mentally ill and obsessive anti-smokers should check them out but then the toymaker says these soft animals have souls and that's is why the mentally ill relate to them. Antis have no souls and no hearts so I guess these little cute toys wouldn't do their mental obsessions any good.

Black Beauty

There’s always a worry, when visiting a pub you’ve enjoyed many years before, that you will find it changed beyond recognition and no longer worth the trip. But I was greatly reassured recently when visiting the Black Horse at Clapton-in-Gordano close to the M5 in the northern tip of Somerset. This is a country pub as country pubs should be. Outwardly, it’s an unassuming, whitewashed building of local stone. Access to the main bar is gained by a passageway that runs right through the pub from front to back. Inside, it’s all stone-flagged floors, ancient beams and creaking settles. There’s a main bar area with a cosy snug opening off. The servery also has an outside window allowing direct service to drinkers in the beer garden.

It once featured on CAMRA’s National Inventory of historic pub interiors, but apparently was taken off because a wall was removed in about 1850. But it’s still one of the most traditional pub interiors I can think of.

On my visit, it had Courage Best, Butcombe Bitter and Exmoor Gold on gravity, and Otter Bitter and Wadworth’s 6X on handpump. Not the selection of a cutting-edge craft beer exhibition, but all beers either brewed in the West Country or having a strong local tradition. Prices were between £2.60 and £2.90 a pint, similar to country pubs around here. The casks stillaged behind the bar had cooling jackets, and my pint of Butcombe was served at the right temperature and had no shortage of condition. When done well, gravity dispense has much to be said for it.

Food is mostly rolls and baguettes with a wide choice of hot and cold fillings, with the menu augmented by a small selection of specials. One of these was Jamaican Jerk Chicken on a bed of rice, so clearly they’re not rigidly wedded to Ye Olde Traditional Meate and Two Vegge style of pub food. This is how pub food should be done – provide a decent meal or snack to visitors, but don’t pretend to be a restaurant. No food is served in the evenings, or on Sundays (the latter something of a failing, I think).

It remains very much a proper pub – just after noon on a weekday there were old boys in there drinking pints of bright orange cloudy cider. Well worth a visit if you’re ever anywhere remotely close. And why can’t more operators of rural pubs realise that championing tradition, with a nod to the contemporary, makes much more sense than chucking it out of the window? The Black Horse is a truly memorable pub – how many knocked-through, stripped-pine establishments offering “contemporary dining with a strong emphasis on local seasonal produce” can say the same?

So don’t let anybody say there’s never anything positive on this blog!

The Faff & Fluster

One fascinating aspect of people’s behaviour in pubs is the extreme difficulty elderly couples seem to have in deciding where to sit. Of course, we’ll all get there eventually (with a bit of luck) but it’s still amusing to watch.

“Where do you you want to sit, Ethel?”

“Oh, I don’t know, anywhere, George.”

“Here then?”

“No, not there.”

“How about here by the window?”

“Oh, all right.”

...two minutes later...

“Ooh, there’s a draught here, shall we move over there?”

I recall one occasion in a Cornish pub where I had bagged what was obviously the best-placed table in the room, and an elderly couple came in and tried out each one of the six or seven other vacant tables before settling on one.

Maybe there is something to be said for the restaurant practice of in effect telling customers where to sit and putting the onus on them to refuse.

BALANCED, ACCURATE, UNBIASED? WHAT'S HAPPENED TO THE BRITISH PRESS

"You cannot hope to bribe or twist thank God! The British journalist. But, seeing what the man will do unbribed, there's no occasion to." - Humbert Wolfe


I'm as angry as a Tasmanian Devil about THIS STORY today which again only presents one side.

As a journalist, I despair that my esteemed professional colleagues are happy to be spoon fed this information without question and so is Simon Clark over at Taking Liberties.

A quick click on Simon's link to Chris Snowdon's post and the methodology used here is unravelled and debunked. When the discredited Pell says she "smoothed" the data, I assume she meant that she stretched the truth to make the "evidence" fit the cause.

Chris explains the true position: "... we can see that childhood asthma rates were not rising before the ban and the only evidence for even a vague drop since the ban comes from the incomplete ten-month 'year' of 2009—several years after the ban came in. And, again, we can see that the peak year for asthma hospitalisations came in 2006—the very year that the smoking ban came into effect, which—by the logic of the study—should have seen a large drop in admissions."

Freedom2Choose (Scotland) also makes nice work of understanding how Pell pulled off this confidence trick.

The other piece of news that makes me want to rant today is this biased piece that again shows no balance. Why didn't the reporter mention the Facebook group that attracted thousands of people who DO want smoking back in pubs? Why didn't the reporter check other pages that are pro-choice? They've existed far longer than than this quit smoking page with 120 members but not a single column inch has been written to promote them.

I'm also fed up with that clichéd "kick the habit" line. This has traditionally been used to describe those giving up heroin because heroin withdrawal does cause spasms that can make someone "kick" involuntarily. This doesn't happen to smokers and we don't get these physical symptoms when we quit tobacco - a herb, not a drug!

The use of this term seems designed to paint smokers as hopeless and "pathetic" addicts and I wish editors and reporters would think before using it.

But thank God for at least one common sense voice among today's anti-smoking hysteria.

I know only too well how much pressure journalists are under today, how much work they are bogged down with,the effect of staff cuts, new technology, having to get through a huge workload each and every day that is always too long. But they should always keep in sight their honour to make their reports balanced, accurate and unbiased.

I can only hope that when the ugly and untrue miracle child asthma story rears it's head again, as I am sure it will, the journalists will at least pick up the phone and attempt to get the other side.

My passion for the pro-choice cause is well known and there are times when I face the smoking issue as a journalist and I tend to react this way. I'm too involved to be impartial which I have a duty to be so I pass the story on even though I'm busting to challenge it.

As an opinionated blogger I can please myself. Rage at the treatment of smokers, the manipulation of science to support an ideological agenda, and the largely prejudicial, dismissive and exclusive attitude of my professional colleagues in the press is why I do it.

Free speech is still legal in the UK and until it is outlawed I will exercise it here if I am prevented from doing so in more traditional media outlets.

BOSTON - THE CENTRE OF EASTERN EUROPE

I'm currently covering Boston Magistrates court and it's proving to be quite an education in Eastern European culture.

All but two of the defendants that I reported on this morning were foreign from Latvia, Russia or Poland and one Brazilian. It was a right hard job to get those names spelled correctly but thank God for court lists.

Mind you, I noted that each defendant had a slightly different spelling to their names as AKAs and I wonder if this is just the police hedging their bets in the hope that at least one version is correct.

One of he English defendants - a woman - also had a very odd spelling of her first name Letitcia AKA Letitica. I must admit I felt a bit sorry for her although she should not have barged in on a police arrest and she accepted that and got fined heavily for it.

A copper gave her a "knee strike" which I think must be another Home Office approved way of beating up the public but I felt it was a bit harsh. She lashed out and didn't intend to kick the officer in the groin (is that another way of saying bollocks?) and she ended up paying him £75 in compensation because he was "a bit sore."

His legitimate knee-strike on her left her with both knees swelled and very sore and I just wonder if this sort of heavy handed treatment is absolutely necessary or if it's coppers being bullies because they can.

I don't blame the police for using these tremendous powers against the public because the Govt has allowed for them to be bruisers by law. I think the Govt had in mind more serious criminals when they approved these sort of measures but this woman was mid 40s, a bit fat, and not the sort you'd expect would be too much for a man to handle.

Yes, yes, I know I'm probably being sexist but men are made stronger - especially when they train like police officers and women are weaker - especially when they don't. I think this sort of physical control method was given to the police to deal with yobs and hard men and not silly women getting in the way.

It's a bit like the proceeds of crime act. It was intended to get millions or thousands of pounds of criminal assets from the Mr Bigs who as far a I can tell still get away with it while a bloke who nicks a guitar and returns it, and a golf bag with clubs, and returns those, is sent up to crown court under the proceeds of crime act. Why? It wasn't said but it seems very odd to me. OK - he was a slimeball who stole a few quid out of a charity box as well - which wasn't recovered - but still that was not the reason for the law being imposed.

I've also seen a burglar addict without two pennies to rub together being jailed under proceeds of crime act when it's quite clear he's pretty useless at what he does, always gets caught, and hasn't made a buck from his bungled attempts. What this act does, it appeares to me, is allow for bully state revenge on little people like him because they can't get the big ones and it makes it look as if they're "doing something" about crime.

12 years of reporting the petty criminal courts is enough to make anyone lose faith in British Justice, its laws, its enforcers, and its courts.

NO WONDER WE'RE SKINT

I know this is old now but I've only just seen it. No wonder the bloody country hasn't got a pot to piss in.

Add to this rubbish the half billion pounds spent in about three years on public funding the anti-smoking industry and it soon becomes clear that NuLabour was literally chucking money away.

I think that lot made up the absolute worst Government in history - ever!

Meanwhile I'm told by a very good source that all that anti-smoking money has been completely thrown into a black hole in Scotland at least.

Back in 2005, the Scottish bigots at ASH were moaning that there were too many smokers over the border - more than a million - shock horror!!!

After all their funding, lies, manipulation, exclusion and forced discriminatory laws, they've managed to bring the estimated number of smokers down from 1,048,000 in 2005 to more than a million in five years. whoopy bloody dooo. How much longer does the tax payer have to keep funding this expensive waste of time just to keep these blaggards in a job?

OUTRAGEOUS!

I can't remember if I was blogging back in July 2008 but I did post this outrageous photo on Facebook at the time and it stirred quite a debate - or rather a lot of agreement about the hate campaigning of the anti-smoking industry.

I asked if this sort of propaganda can ever be justified and pointed out that it is quite wrong to compare smokers with those who committed the worst terrorism act ever.

Dick Puddlecote has noticed it's back again and this time they've made a nice little video of abuse aimed at inciting yet more hatred against a minority group.

As Dick points out : "To finger-waggers the world over, 9/11 wasn't so much an unspeakable act of evil, more a handy occurrence on which to exercise their mentally disturbed fantasies."

Some events are just so harrowing they should not be undermined by advertisers in this way. What next? A video of children in Dunblane being shot at school to persuade people not to join gun clubs? How about a photo of a battered Baby P and all his horrific injuries to advertise parenting lessons?

I haven't been to see my GP since the twin towers anti-smoking campaign came out. My doctors surgery is always writing to me and inviting me to come for a smear test, a flu jab, holiday innoculations etc so when I was called in for a health check, I took up the offer.

The nurse I saw asked if I smoked. I replied with my usual : "I do not give details of any of my lifestyle habits on the grounds that I may be discriminated against. I will not say if I smoke, or drink, or eat 10 cream cakes a day or five apples and two pears. Neither will I tell you if I climb mountains or ride horses..."

She stopped me there. I explained that I was a pro-choice campaigner and told her about the above twin towers campaign and how offensive it was.

"Whatever you think about smoking, it is quite wrong to equate smokers with those who committed the worst act of terrorism ever," I said.

She said : "Well, there are many people who would disagree with you. Smokers are as bad. It's a good campaign."

This nurse, and others like her who infect the NHS with prejudice, is one reason why I don't go to my GP anymore and why I'd really rather drop dead than go to hospital if I was ill, suffering a heart attack or dying of cancer. I am not a terrorist, nor a murderer, I am a lifelong cultural smoker and I simply wish to be left alone to live my life as I please.

I really think it's time that the Government got some balls and stated clearly that it will not support such blatant hate groups.

The smoking ban of 2007 encouraged this hatred, legalised discrimination, and gave a licence to bigots like ASH to be as abusive as they like. That is the only reason I was ever against it.

I don't want to smoke near anyone who doesn't like it but I can co exist and there is room for both of us in this world. Tolerance is a virtue. It's such a shame that our Government doesn't encourage that.

SMOKING LAWYER IN HIDING FROM ASH

ASH the intolerant and bigotted anti-smoking organisation that works to promote discrimination and exclusion has forced this poor bloke to go into hiding

It seems to me that our Govts in the Uk are supporting health terrorists worst than those Islamic or Christian religious extremists.

Are Cameron and the ilLiberal Demotwat Cleggy really unaware of what a prejudicial organisation ASH is whatever side of the ocean it's on?

Wake up you two. Can't you see you're being used as dick-heads because ASH has sussed how stupid you are and that you really will swallow any old shit it puts out?

As most of the anti-smoking bile now comes from Cleggy's lot - who no one wanted as dep PM anyway - and most of the tolerance comes from Cameron's lot, my guess is that the Conservatives will give Cleggy enough rope to hang himself and his party before the next election.

This issue, I honestly believe, will chase the Illiberlas back to the fringes at the next election and make them as unelectable as Nulab is now. And all they have to do to win respect and more votes from both sides of this debate is to stop being bullies and treat people equally. Is that really so hard?


H/T Forest Eirean

WORK BESIDE THE SEASIDE

I think I blog as a means of procrastination when I should be writing something else - like the edited scenes of my screen play - so I will make this post my last today and aim to procrastinate further tomorrow.

Part of the reason why getting my dissertation in and hitting the deadline was so exhausting was because of also taking work at a paper in Skegness which I'm rather enjoying although the travel to work time is one and half hours each way.

I must admit that I felt like a city fish out of resort and Fenland water as I didn't know much about the area. Now I know that fat people and smokers seem to like being beside the seaside very much because Skegness is full of them.

One of my first stories was about the Fenland hell road that is known as Hobhole Drain and where this poor woman came a cropper

I hadn't described the road properly and said it was on the A16 instead of it being a minor Fenland back road. I had to endure a right patronising telling off from the local chap who has made it his mission to finally get something done. I'm told the Parish Council has been on at the County Council for the last 30 years about it and despite it being a 60mph road, anyone driving more than 15mph will hit something and end up in that Drain.

The road has been described to me as the skin on a custard because the ecological nature of the Fenland roads means the drained earth beneath moves constantly causing humps, bumps and potholes to appear which the County Council says it is investigating by sending consultants down there to have a look.

The chap who is fighting so hard to have something done that will actually make a difference is furious. He says authorities spend far too much money on these consultants who then do nothing and the saga continues until another life has been lost.

I wish them luck with it. I didn't know the story above related to this road and when I read it, I spent the rest of the day depressed. I'm told by an excellent source that this lady's grief was made worse by the dramatisation and inaccuracy of the story picked up by a press agency that had to add a bit of glitter to make the sale.

On a happier note, I ended last week with a thank you from an old couple who came to see me to complain about their insurers. The couple aged 73 and 75 have been insured for 51 years and in all that time they have only ever made two claims.

They used to be insured with Lloyds TSB Insurance but the annual cost jumped so high the couple dumped them and went to More Than. They wanted to sell their bungalow by the sea but then found a leak was coming from a pipe under the bath in the small bathroom.

More Than told them to get a plumber who said he would have to pretty much demolish the bathroom to get at the pipe and they should check with their insurers that he could proceed with the work. More Than said yes. The work was done, the couple submitted their claim, they then got a letter from Lloyds TSB Insurance saying they would not honour it because the plumber had caused damage to the bathroom to get at the pipe.

The old people were shocked. They didn't want insurance with Lloyds TSB but got it anyway though More Than, and they thought they had done everything right. As they battled through various 1,2,3,4,5 options to speak to various people in call centres who would only ever give them a first name, they haven't had a bath since mid August and came into the newspaper for help in desperation.

I rang Lloyds TSB head communication bod who initially said they should have read the small print. I told him that wasn't acceptable. Half a day later and I received a call from someone else from Lloyds TSB saying they would look into the details and get back to me. By the next morning, another head bod in PR rang and said the old couple's claim would be honoured as a "gesture of goodwill". We are talking £150 after all and not a few million pounds!

I phoned the happy couple who couldn't thank me enough. They phoned at the end of the day to tell me someone had been in touch saying the insurance company would only pay for the leaking pipe and not the damage done to the bathroom to get at it. Grrrrrr.

I rang Lloyds TSB Insurance again and reminded them of their promise to "honour the claim" and I got the sense that there are just too many arms to this business and people who work in it who don't talk to each other but I'll have to wait and see the outcome when I'm back in Skegness on Thursday.

Meanwhile, I'll leave you with this pleasant view of a busy Skegness town centre in the height of summer - just in case readers of this blog decide it is their dream summer holiday location.

QURAN, BIBLE AND THE NATURE OF FAITH

I've been very out of touch while my head has been buried in a fiction world and so today I caught up on some of my favourite blogs.

Smoking Hot seems to have a found an unusual way of celebrating his birthday on September 11.

I decided to read the Quran when war broke out to see what all the fuss was about. I didn't get far into it when I realised that actually it wasn't that different to the Bible in that it has the same characters in the Old Testament but a different perspective about them. I must admit that in my lifetime I've read about as much of both - a few chapters before getting bored.

Personally I'm with the blokie I heard about who rolled spliffs using pages from both the Bible and the Quran and I'll bear that in mind next time I'm short on fag papers.

Meanwhile, I'm checking out the Pagan religion. According to WikiAnswers if Pagans had a holy book, it could be considered to be Nature itself and I'm all for that as long as it doesn't involve taking us back to live in caves which is where the loony Green Party would have us live.

Paganism is also Britain's original faith and it was only perverted and maligned because Christians wanted to covert those they saw as savages and suddenly it became like the devil incarnate.

I'm sure the lies and propaganda of those ancient times against Paganism is much the same methods as they use today against Smokers and humans as the cause of climate change - and they have the cheek to claim anti-smoking and green hysteria is progressive (ha ha haa ha ha haaa ha).

Fair outlook for Robinson's

There’s an interesting article here on the Morning Advertiser website by Roger Protz discussing Robinson’s, our local independent brewer here in Stockport. It’s quite amusing how the former Trotskyite Protz has now become a cheerleader for the famously conservative-minded and indeed sometimes quasi-feudal family brewers. The Robinson family do give the impression of having a clear vision for taking the company forward and certainly aren’t willing to let it stagnate. But Oliver Robinson is surely correct when he says “Of our 400 pubs, 20% are doing well, 60% could do better and 20% are struggling.” It should be pointed out that, while the Arden Arms, which is something of a showpiece pub, may be busy on a wet Monday lunchtime, it’s unlikely that you would find anywhere near as many customers at that time in any of Robinson’s other pubs in central Stockport.

Worth a read

A couple of good articles on Sp!ked this week:

A licence to interfere in our everyday lives – Josie Appleton says the Lib-Cons’ proposed reforms to the licensing laws would make them even more authoritarian and killjoy than they already are - no mean feat.

Decent drinkers vs demon drinkers – Tim Black reckons the campaign to ramp up the price of booze is an unspoken class war by wine-quaffers against cider-consumers.

LIFE STRANGER THAN FICTION

It's been two long years and a lot of hard work but my creative writing MA course at Nottingham Trent University has ended.

The dissertation is finished and it's handed in. I've sat back and rested, drank red wine and smoked in the garden and now I've had time to reflect about what I plan to do in future.

Thanks to help and guidance from my tutor Georgina Lock, my script turned out well and now I want to do something with it. I have a couple of scenes to edit and then it's ready to go out to an agent I have in mind. My fingers are very tightly crossed.

The fiction sessions didn't go as well during the course but I do intend to keep up this blog although it may be some time before I update it. Fiction writing takes me ages. My tutor Graham Joyce tells me I need to chill out about it and I think he's right. Now that the MA is over, fiction writing might be more of a pleasure because I have nothing to prove.

Being able to tell my stories in the medium of screen writing is giving me a huge buzz. I want to get my finished 90 minute piece sent off by the end of this week and then I'll be busy organising myself for daughter number one's wedding in mid October. Another reason to make short-story writing wait.

Meanwhile, I'll be checking out this site to find a hotel that will welcome me during my stop-over immediately before and after the big event.

Being a smoker in these modern times means that life really is stranger than fiction at present.

Analysing pub closures

Last week, I referred to a study by CR Consulting demonstrating how the smoking ban had been the primary cause of pub closures over the past three years. Dave Atherton has now written about this at more length on the blog of the Institute of Economic Affairs.

While in-depth research would be required to ascertain accurately the relative impact of various factors, the statistical evidence certainly appears to support the view that the smoking ban is playing a pivotal role in the rapid decline of Britain’s pubs. If this is the case, the policy implications are clear: to reduce the rate of closures, pubs and clubs should at the very least be allowed to provide separate ventilated smoking rooms.

Turning in his grave

I can’t imagine that the great economist and philosopher Adam Smith would be very impressed by the plans to implement a 45 pence per unit minimum alcohol price in his native land. But the arguments against it are very well summed up here by Dr Eamonn Butler from the modern-day institute that bears his name.

Even if cheap alcohol were the problem, how should you deal with it? Putting up the tax would at least be defensible economics. Minimum pricing isn’t. Price controls just mess up the market system and produce all sorts of perverse results which may be hard to predict. And once the politicians have started to regulate one price on the supermarket shelves, where do you think their public-spirited intervention will stop?

Shame about the food

Pete Brown says here in The Publican exactly what I’ve argued about pub food on several occasions in the past – that pub menus haven’t significantly changed in a quarter of a century, and the vast majority of menus are, with a few exceptions, pretty much the same as each other. Indeed, there was more originality in pub menus in 1980, when there was more of a spirit of experimentation and “suck it and see”, than there is now. When there is so much innovation and variety in the restaurant sector, even down to the everyday “family restaurants” on your local retail park, pubs remain mired in a hackneyed, old-fashioned world of “hearty fare” and meat and two veg.

This represents a crushing lack of imagination, innovation or listening to customers. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with these dishes per se, but they form such a tiny, narrow sliver of what we now like to eat as a nation, and when they’re all identical, and when there is simply no option of a nice, tasty meal that is going to be less than 75 per cent of your daily recommended intake of fat and calories, I suddenly realised why I find eating in pubs to be largely a depressing experience.

I’m not saying I want sashimi platters with my pint of ale. I’m not saying there is no merit in hearty fare, or traditional British dishes.

But when you look at almost any other aspect of pubs – décor, beer selection, ambience – there is incredible diversity as you roam the country, even within a single town.

Beyond snacks and sandwiches, I rarely eat in pubs now because the food is so consistently dull and unappealing. Traditional English gristle and stodge blighted my childhood – it’s the last thing I want to eat today.

Yet on the same website we have Jessica Harvey praising “retro nostalgia pub grub” which surely is the last thing forward-looking pubs should be promoting.