INDUSTRY ON THE EDGE

Yesterday was my birthday and I spent it watching the day's events at the Leveson Inquiry looking into the hacking affair which brought down the biggest newspaper in Britain and cast a shadow over the rest of the industry.

As a professional journalist, I agree entirely with all that freelance Nick Davies says about the need for some changes but not Govt or state direction of what journalists should or should not do in the quest for the truth.

Davies, who is one of my journalistic heroes, is right when he says that when newspapers brand someone wrongly and defame their character, they should have to print retractions with equal prominence rather than due prominence. This, I believe, would make the media more cautious before launching an attack if they knew that six pages of wrongful coverage would have to be balanced by six pages of putting things right.

The PCC is not adequately doing the job of ensuring regulation when things go wrong and too often looks the other way. But what can be done to regulate a free press without resorting to the tactics of those tin-pot dictator countries that control what information gets out in the public domain and what does not?

I'd certainly trust an ethical journalist like Davies to be at the forefront of any discussion or decision made to ensure rogue journos (or their overbearing editors) stay on the right side of morality in that quest for the truth. But they should never be prevented from finding that truth - especially when holding Govt ministers and powerful people to account.

Nick also spoke of robotic journalists and we smokers know all about them. The ones who don't look too far and stay on safe ground and accept any old press release as Bible Truth without even testing the authority or methods of these so called "experts".

Former News of the World deputy features editor Paul McMullan is also right when he says there is something rather sinister in a free society that jails journalists because of the stories they print.

I also agree that the NotW with its 168 year history should have been sold to an independent proprietor rather than just being shut down by Rupert Murdoch in the hope that he would escape the trouble that was bound to follow.

I bought that last edition in July, for posterity to add to my collection of other old newspapers, but was disappointed that in that long history mostly the trash printed under the editorship of Brooks and Coulson - the "scum of journalism" (in McMullan's words)- was published in that final edition.

Where the NotW went wrong, for me, was in hacking the phones of ordinary people and it was shocking what was done to Milly Dowler's family. I find that impossible to justify "in the public interest" because of the false hope it gave that family. And I don't believe it is the job of journalists to run counter criminal investigations alongside an active police enquiry.

When criminal cases are cold - such as Wearside Jack - such investigations can be justified "in the public interest" even though in some ways the "victim" of this journalistic investigation was an easier target to bag than someone like former defence secretary Jonathan Aitken or state-protected liars and cheats like two shags Prescott.

I also feel that some of the complaints by the many celebrities hacked is rather hollow. They will suck up to newspapers for as much publicity as they can get - as long as it is positive - but they will cry foul when caught out. Playing with the media is playing with fire and as professionals, these celebs should know this.

The hacking affair has left the newspaper industry in an even worse state than it is already. The internet, cost cutting, loss of advertising revenues and community support, have all conspired to ensure that many local newspapers won't be around in five years' time.

When the Leveson Inquiry reports back even those wealthy national papers with huge budgets will be on their knees and part of an industry that will have to work very differently to salvage what's left.

Maybe even humble freelancers like me will be able to make more hits in the press with our honestly gained and human interest stories that always got sidelined or spiked before in favour of the huge payments made to Private Investigators to dig dirt on big names - although we didn't know that at the time.

If this Inquiry brings back truth, ethics, and legitimate targets for investigative journalism without infringing on freedom of speech and expression, and the freedom of the press to scrutinise and expose wrong doing against the public, then it will be worth it.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see how this pans out but what comes across clearly to me is newspapers are dying because they've turned on the vulnerable while protecting the powerful.

Worth passing a few offies for?

On a vaguely similar theme to the last post, I ran a poll asking whether people bought beer from specialist off-licences, the results of which are shown in the graphic.

It’s interesting that 50% of respondents said “occasionally”, which suggests that they will contemplate using a specialist, but for various reasons don’t do so regularly. I would hazard a guess that the main reason was not price but simply convenience – while people recognise the appeal of the specialist, they won’t go too far out of their way to visit one. This is reflected by Jesusjohn’s comment on the poll:

I perhaps would more often if there were one close by. I live in Hackney - and for all the proliferation of lifestyle bars and delis, we still lack a beer specialist. My nearest, I'd wager, is Utobeer at Borough Market - a very pricey offer, if understandably so. Even so, with Waitrose stocking Thornbridge, White Shield, Sierra Nevada and Sam Adams, it stocks enough decent stock for me to have something good in the fridge. Tesco's BrewDog Imperial IPA is also worthy of honourable mention. I would still go to a specialist - and indeed do on occasion - but it would have to be a local resource. With online purchasing also available for rare beers, it's simply too much effort for too little reward to go out of my way to a specialist. And bar selection has also improved immeasurably in the area. One final point - a beer shop that really does deserve more praise is Bacchanalia in Cambridge. Absolutely first rate.

As I’ve said before, I do call in about monthly at the Bottle Stop in Bramhall when I’m passing nearby, but, as it’s about six miles away in a direction I don’t routinely go in, I don’t feel it’s worth making a special journey more frequently. I would also say that their previously very impressive selection of German – especially Bavarian – imports has been rather reduced in recent years. It seems that German beers aren’t very fashionable nowadays. On the other hand, their prices are roughly on a par with undiscounted supermarket prices, so you’re not expected to pay an arm and a leg.

If you want to make a success of a specialist off-licence, it would seem you need to be careful to get both your location and social mix of catchment area right.

Worth passing a few pubs for?

I grew up in an area of North Cheshire dominated by Greenalls, and so in the 1970s it made a refreshing change to head off a few miles to the south where, around Tarporley, there was a cluster of four Robinson’s pubs. And from time to time we would visit Chester and make a beeline for the Olde Custom House, one of the very few pubs this side of the English border selling Border beers from Wrexham.

At University in Birmingham, the city was dominated by a duopoly of Ansell’s and M&B, so the handful of Davenports pubs were an attraction, and a bus trip to the Black Country to sample Batham’s, Holden’s and Simpkiss was a virtual pilgrimage. Even finding a Banks’s or Marston’s pub in the surrounding areas (then two separate and very different companies) was something of an achievement.

After that, I worked in Surrey for a while, again an area dominated by two of the then Big Six, in this case Courage and Ind Coope. But the county was surrounded by a number of well-respected independent brewers – Young’s, King & Barnes, Brakspear’s and Gale’s (all now closed) – whose tied houses either spread into the edges or started not far beyond the border. Fuller’s had virtually no presence outside London in those days.

It was also very much the case back then that the tied houses of a particular brewery had a distinctive house character. Young’s pubs tended to be big, a bit posh, traditional and comfortable, with plenty of dark wood, whereas Brakspear’s were often small and Spartan with bare wooden benches and whitewashed interior walls. Around here, Holt’s pubs were noted for their busy, basic and boisterous atmosphere, often in an environment of some architectural splendour.

But times have changed, and over the past twenty years one of the most significant changes to the British pub scene has been the wholesale removal of brewers’ identities from pubs. It has to be questioned whether today there is any cachet gained from linking a pub with a particular brewery. The beer enthusiast is likely to be found in a multi-beer outlet working his way through fifteen different golden ales tasting of lychees, while looking down with scorn at the neighbouring Robbies’ house and its boring brown beer. While Robinson’s and Lees have been busy buying up pubs from the pub companies in the last few years, in general their main objective has been to acquire establishments with the potential to develop the food trade, not showcases for their beers.

It certainly does still have a cachet for me, as in any given area the tied houses of a family brewer are likely to my mind to be better run, more “pubby” and have better-kept beer than pubs belonging to pub companies. But, in the overall pub market, does being identified as “A Bloggs’ House” now give a pub any kind of USP?

The one exception to this is Sam Smith’s, who ironically don’t even paint the name of the company on their pubs. They have a very definite, even somewhat eccentric, policy of low prices, all products bearing their own branding and a no-frills, traditional atmosphere. It doesn’t always work, but at their best Sam’s pubs are examples of what good pubs are all about. In the London area, where they have a number of pubs, they must stand out from the general herd even more than they do here.

(And for those too young to remember, “Worth passing a few pubs for” was an advertising slogan used in the 1970s for, of all things, Younger’s Tartan)

Beer battered

Reports from Scotland show a 14% fall in volumes of beer sold in the off-trade following the Scottish government’s banning of multibuy discounts from 1 October. Obviously one month’s figures are not enough to establish a trend, and it is likely there was some element of stocking-up at the end of September. Part of the reduction is also probably attributable to the fact that the effective average price of beer rose, rather than simply multibuys encouraging people to buy more than they otherwise would. The supermarkets may also welcome the opportunity to increase their margins, as big-pack multibuys, while rarely sold at an actual loss, were often heavily discounted as a tool to get customers to visit one particular shop rather than a competitor.

Over time, the retailers will no doubt work out what combination of pack sizes and price points work best under the new regime to maximise sales, and it will be interesting to see what the figures look like over a full year. As I understand it, while you can’t sell two of something for less than twice the price of one, you don’t have to sell all pack sizes of the same product exactly pro-rata, so there’s nothing to stop you selling 4x500ml cans of Carling for £3.99, and a multipack of 10x440ml cans for £7.99.

It’s not something that would greatly bother me personally, and if Morrisons started selling single bottles for £1.39 rather than 4 for £5.50 I doubt whether I’d buy any less. But it’s another small salami slice of restriction imposed on the drinks trade, and it’s the direction of travel that should concern anyone interested in the brewing industry.

It also must be questioned whether, at a time of a flatlining economy and rising unemployment, reducing the revenues of a substantial business sector by 14% as a result of government action is really a sensible thing to do.

Edit: I see in today’s paper that ASDA are advertising 20x440ml cans of Carling, or 18x440ml cans of Stella, for £10. Including Scotland. Both under 30p per unit. That’s two fingers up to Salmond, then.

TOOTH EXTRACTION UK STYLE

Desperate pain from toothache leads to desperate measures for one bloke who, I'm told, couldn't find an NHS dentist.

It's not my idea of tooth extraction but each to his or her own I suppose ... and please don't try this at home (or work) folks because the shock might just kill you.

The ciderator

Earlier this year, celebrity chef Marco Pierre White introduced his own branded beer “The Governor”, in conjunction with Middleton brewers J. W. Lees. Now, I’m no fan of his, but I suppose this must be praised as an effort to give beer more class and less of a downmarket image. However, having sampled it in both bottled and cask forms, I have to say it comes across as just another underwhelming brown beer from Lees.

Marco has now collaborated with Herefordshire cidermaker Weston’s to produce a “Governor” cider. It’s 4.8% ABV and retails in Morrison’s at £1.75 for a 500ml bottle, or 4 for £5.50. It is pale in colour with a slight greenish tinge. There’s a small amount of sediment which produces a moderately hazy appearance, although much less than Westons’ Old Rosie. It has a fresh, quite sharp taste, that probably qualifies as “medium-dry”. It only has a slight hint of carbonation and overall is probably the best bottled approximation to a traditional draught cider I’ve come across. As described here, the intention is to reproduce the characteristics of Old Rosie at a more moderate strength, which I would say they have succeeded in doing. I spotted the similarity before reading that article. However, as it is well-nigh still and a touch hazy, it might not appeal to those who are more used to Magners and Stella “Cidre”.

While I do enjoy the occasional bottle of “craft” cider, I’ve never really tried to review any on here as I lack the tasting vocabulary to describe them adequately. However, I recently sampled Hereford’s Pilgrim, which took my eye as it promises to donate 10p to Help for Heroes for each bottle sold. The company are rather coy about where it’s actually made, although the postcode links it to an industrial estate in Ledbury. However, even though it is supporting a good cause, I thought it was pretty unpleasant, with a dominant perfumey off-flavour. I won’t be trying that again.

Sheep and goats

Although the protection of workers was often used as a “smokescreen”, the underlying motivation behind smoking bans has always been an attempt to reduce the prevalence of smoking in society through a process of “denormalisation”. However, in many places where bans have been imposed, that doesn’t seem to work, and very often the steady decline in smoking rates that has occurred until the ban has stalled or even reversed.

That has certainly been the case in Ireland – “there was a slight increase in the percentage of smokers since 2002, with 29% admitting to being a smoker in 2007, compared to 27% in 2002” – the Irish ban having come in in 2004. And the latest figures from Scotland show that the same is happening there.

The number of Scots smoking has risen since it was banned in public places – and the vast majority live in our poorest housing estates.

Arguably a key reason for this is that the bans in effect force people to identify as smokers, and once they have done that they become more committed to sticking with it. You can’t really be a casual smoker any more.

One of the comments rings all too true:

Billy Dunn, 68, Parkhead, Glasgow

The retired factory worker has smoked for 60 years.

He said: “Scottish people have always smoked and it’s not going to change.

“I still come out for my pint every other day and I still manage to have a cigarette.

“However, the pubs are a lot quieter now than they were about four or five years because a lot of people aren’t able to stand outside smoking like I can.

A lot of smokers have difficulty coming down out of their homes to go for a drink and the last thing they want to be doing is having to get up every 30 minutes and go outside.

It’s also quite instructive how readily smoking and drinking are linked together:

Also, people living in the most deprived areas have very few things to indulge in which are theirs. Smoking is one of them. They might say, ‘I can light up a cigarette or drink a pint – that’s my thing.’

They have become all too often joined in a figure of speech like the proverbial horse and carriage. And, while the aficionado of craft beer, or claret, or malt whisky, may jib at the suggestion, if the Righteous choose to tar you with the same brush there’s nothing you can do about it.

Also well worth reading is this article by Dave Atherton (a regular commenter here) on The Commentator in which he argues that “smoking bans in pubs and bars, and now proposed car smoking bans constitute the most sinister assault on private property rights outside of an authoritarian regime.”

Last of the independents

Go in a typical major supermarket, and you will find a range of beers that would not have disgraced a cutting-edge independent off-licence fifteen years ago. A huge spread of British independent and micro brewers, German and Czech pilsners, Belgian specialities, American craft beers. That’s an amazing transformation from the time when all you’d get is cans of McEwan’s Export and Carling Black Label.

But that spells bad news for independent off licences, who increasingly see the supermarkets encroaching on their territory. The growth in the appreciation of beer has led to a huge rise in beer-focused pubs, but the specialist off licences have at best trod water. The big difference is that, when you go out for a drink, you are specifically looking for a drinking venue, but when shopping for beer most people tend to combine it with shopping for all the rest of the range of household essentials.

Clearly the primary aim of Tesco et al is to make money, but at the end of the day you will only make money by satisfying consumer demand. They know that alcoholic drinks are probably the biggest single category in the typical grocery spend and, if they fail to offer a decent selection of beer, their customers will take their business elsewhere. The supermarket beer range may not be quite the best in the world, but for most customers it’s good enough to ensure they don’t bother making a pilgrimage to the specialist.

All too often that leaves the independents scrabbling for the last 1% of trade amongst the people for whom “you can get it in Tesco” is a major reason for not drinking a beer. Those obscurantist beer geeks will always be there, but they’re not the foundation on which you can build a growing business.

I call in at my most local specialist – the Bottle Stop in Bramhall – about once a month, and pick up a few bottles. But that’s only because I’m passing it, and otherwise I wouldn’t be too unhappy to exist on a diet of what Tesco and Morrisons sell.

SOME LINKS

Rob Lyons writing in Spiked talks about how the BMA sexed up science to push for authoritarian political outcomes like Tony Bliar's "dodgy dossier" supported war in Iraq

UKIP Leader Nigel Farage asks : "have these pettifogging nincompoops ever heard of car windows?"

The Sabatage Times says the government, the doctors and the nanny state can keep their noses out and let us enjoy life’s simple pleasures in peace.

Blogger Anna Raccoon on how sounding off, and laughing at the insanity of the world, has been part of the essential tools in the weaponry of survival.

Chris Snowdon talks about how puritans are targeting drinkers as the new smokers

The View from Cullingworth on the campaign to push the poor towards illegal loan sharks.

Ring my bell

The ongoing decline of the pub trade inevitably leads to staffing reductions, so very often one person is left to look after a serving area which can’t all be seen from one vantage point. And, even if there is just a single bar counter, there are reasons such as toilet breaks and popping into the kitchen that mean the sole server is absent.

In these situations, it’s all too easy for staff to be distracted and fail to check regularly whether there are any customers waiting. I recall one occasion in a rural pub in Staffordshire, which had separate counters in the “dining” and “pub” sides, where I had to wait what seemed like an age before anyone noticed me, and less patient people might well have walked out.

So surely it makes sense to bring back the service bell, a staple of the old two-bar pubs, but rarely seen nowadays. At least that way you might stand a chance of actually getting served.

FINALLY - THE TRUTH EMERGES

Thanks to Anon in the comments on the previous post for drawing my attention to this Radio Five debate yesterday.

I hear Frank Davis is going to transcribe the whole thing at some point today.

In the radio interview with presenter Nicky Campbell, Witchfinder General Debs Arnott finally admits the goal is "to get rid of smoking" at 31 mins in.

She also lies when asked about ASH's funding. Yes, they do steal cash from the likes of the BHF and CRUK, that should be using their funds for medical research to find cures for these illnesses that claim many lives, because that is what people donate to them for, but because both orgs are heavily funded by Big Pharma, the deal is that they must also fund propaganda at ASH covertly or indirectly so that ASH can push people towards Big Pharma's products.

At 41 mins into the radio debate, an oncologist member of the BMA says smoking can be good for you. She claims, and I agree, that this latest lying propaganda from the BMA is counter productive. She also says HPV must be present before smoking causes lung cancer. Smoking does not cause it on its own.

I feel a bit sorry for this lady doctor because I feel sure her job in now in jeopardy. Anyone who dares go "off message" and give some actual facts on smoking and health is usually hounded out of their profession.

Meanwhile it seems that some local people are angry with Smoke Free Lincs - a public funded alleged public service that has shown itself up as a bigoted liar by backing a false and invented study made up by the BMA to push through a car ban to aid in the further denormalisation of smokers and ultimate eradication of a legal product and the criminalsation of its consumers.

I'm told people can comment on the Smoke Free Lincs site and tell them how unhappy they are that this organisation prefers to deal in lies than truth and giving a disservice to people rather than truthful, helpful, and factual health information to enable them to make the right choices.

Do feel free to add your own comments informing Smoke Free Lincs that lies are completely unacceptable and innapropriate in the smoking and health debate.

** One final point that has occurred to me is that the Radio interview also showed up state health persecutor Anne Milton as a liar. You may recall she told me that no decision had been taken on this year's funding to ASH - but this lie is exposed by Deb Arnott who told the world that the DoH funds the quango.

UPDATE : The BMA has finally retracted its claim and admits it lied but it has now made up a new figure and expects us all to believe it. The organisation's credibility has already been compromised.

The fact is, the research and study the BMA mentions was never done. It doesn't exist. It was a lie built up from a random newspaper quote left by a smokerphobic on a forum so I, for one, can't see that it makes a difference whether they say 23 times or 11 times. No study - no fact. Just another new guesstimate for effect.

At the sign of the gallows

On a non beer-related forum, the subject recently came up of pub signs that completely span the road. The best must surely be that of the Fox & Hounds at Barley near Royston in Hertfordshire, with its cast of fox, hounds and mounted huntsmen. Others that were mentioned were the Magpie at Stonham Parva in Suffolk, where the sign spans the main A140 road, and two coaching inns, the Green Man & Black’s Head at Ashbourne in Derbyshire, and the George at Stamford in Lincolnshire.

Are there any others to be found?

Stop panicking

There’s an excellent article by Chris Snowdon of Velvet Glove, Iron Fist fame in yesterday’s Independent entitled We should stop panicking about Boozy Britain. Good to see a rare outbreak of common sense about alcohol in the mainstream media as opposed to the usual hysterical moral panic.

SHAME ON THE BMA

Dick Pudlecote was his usual perceptive self when he said that the BMA and BBC will lie to you today.

Either they purposefully told untruths or they were misled into saying untruths but either way we should be able to expect our scientific establishment will not hoodwink the public to achieve it's political ideological aims.

As demonstrated by Chris Snowdon the mythical report that the BMA relied on to push denormalisation further is a fraud and has been exposed by researchers as a made up fact nicked from the forum of a local newspaper in 1998 and cynically manipulated into truth.

Carl Minns was able to easily work it out and like he says, why on earth can't modern journalists look behind the press release propaganda they are spoon fed.

I had so much to say during the interview I had with BBC Radio Lincolnshire this morning. The presenter on Rod Whiting's show didn't even care that the "study" the BMA quoted from was fake. He didn't care about the truth on the SHS studies either but then that's wasn't a surprise.

The local BBC was just happy to push the idea in a vox pop and never mind the twisted and heavily biased way the questions were put. It was thoroughly depressing to hear the Sheeples bleating in agreement about studies that show smokers kill their children when they are not even true.

I really wanted to put Belinda's question about why if smokers' kids are in mortal danger, and they have so little choice, they were ignored to save drunken adults from smokers in pubs first.

I got to mention some of the SHS biological studies that show nicotine suppresses asthma but I was gobsmacked at the sheer naivety of the presenter who said it couldn't possibly be true until I pointed out that actually nicotine is used in many pharma treatments and medicines so, yes, it actually could be.

He carried on regardless and the debate didn't move forward but stagnated to a point where I wasn't even sure if I was plugged in. The smoke free woman, of course, was given the biggest slice of time but I got her to reluctantly accept that most smoker parents are considerate.

However, she's so afraid for the tiny minority that don't show consideration for something that might irritate their passengers rather than harm them that she believes the jackboot of the law is called for.

Of course the real motivation for dragging out this old "23 times more toxins than in a smokey pub" threat is because Lung Cancer Foundation luvvie Alex Cunningham MP is forcing his motion to ban smoking in cars through parliament again on November 25.

This is based on a 16,000 signature petition organised and signed by the Lung Foundation, it's activists and supporters, and allies. It's hardly representative of the national 51 million population of England but they have enough to pretend it's what "everybody" wants.

The BMA needs to get out and talk to the general grass roots public more - and so does Alex Cunningham. People are not taking to the streets demanding a ban on smoking in cars or homes in the way that they are taking to the streets to protest about cuts, the economy nose diving, the EU or even tuition fees and dodgy bankers.

The public has demonstrated it really doesn't give a damn whether people smoke on and in their own property but the BMA with false propaganda is trying to force them to be concerned and look with disdain on smokers.

How you stop the hate and lies from spreading is beyond me when the very people and organisations that we should be relying on for truth and accurate information are the very ones that tell the biggest porkies.

The BMA will get its way eventually - perhaps on November 25 despite Cameron's alleged reservations that it is a civil liberty taker too far. The Govt will rely on co-operation from the BMA in pushing through it's destruction reforms of the NHS and it won't want to risk non-compliance from a very powerful medical lobby that can make or break its plans.

The only thing that stinks here is the rotten corruption that lies at the very heart of those institutions we should be able to trust.

The BMA has shamed itself today.

UPDATE : The best story on this today has come from The Daily Mash which says :

Dr Bill McKay, a GP from Peterborough, said: "Are you absolutely sure? Well, I'm afraid that if poor people's cars can do the same things as our cars then we are going to need more money.

He added: "In the meantime we do need to ban poor people from opening their car windows so that they understand how important it is not to smoke in cars."

Helen Archer, a mother of three from Stevenage, backed the BMA, adding: "If I smoked then my kids would be in the most terrible danger for the three minutes it takes us to drive to school or McDonalds.

"And it's bad enough watching a fat kid heave himself out the back of an Audi without him then coughing his lungs over everybody's bacon double-cheeseburgers."

Smoker, Tom Logan, said: "I don't have kids and in the interests of my health I don't allow kids in my car.

MEET MALEVOLENT MILTON ...

... and her Minions From Ash.

Finally something to show after planting my tobacco seeds indoors in mid-September. In the true spirit of The Resistance, I've taken a leaf from other bloggers' and smoking ban warriors' pages and named my plants in the best way possible to shove two fingers up at our persecutors.

Audrey Silk from America's NYC Clash smokers' rights group named her home grown tobacco garden after Smokerphobic snob Barmy Bloomsberg.

And Leg Iron named his plant after Witch-finder General Dreadful (Deborah) Arnott.

Mine are named in dishonour of the head of our health department and those in her ideological front group.

The seed supplier told me I'd be better off growing the plants indoors under a grow light as I planted out of season. Spring outdoors seems to be the best time. I chose to leave both Malevolent Milton and her Minions from Ash in my office to watch as I smoked and worked. Light came in from one window but the poor souls didn't like the winter gloom and didn't develop much.

At the brink of death, I caved in and went to my local hydroponics shop and bought a over head grow light that my other half set up for me. Malevolent Milton went under it as I left the Minions from Ash to wilt without help - just to see if they could make it on their own.

Milton soon settled in and stayed unmoved for about a week and then suddenly began to grow to the size pictured above. Ash's healthiest leaf from it's biggest puny plant, about the size of a small fingernail, poked out desperately searching for light but I left it for a while longer.

Satisfied after a few days that the Minions were not going to develop without any help, I succumbed and moved them next to their buddy Malevolent.

Leg Iron advised me to plant in big pots and these are the largest I have. Some of the Ashites may not survive but I would expect one to suck the life from the home made compost and ruthlessley take what's good from the others to save its own neck.

Milton's small bottom leaf began to yellow so I picked it and now, with no clear idea of what I'm doing, I'm curing it as an initial experiment. I've got it in a damp disposable kitchen towel. So far it's just wet, a bit broken, but not going brown.

I'll check on it tomorrow and report back if there is any change.

STATE SMOKERPHOBIA IN ACTION

Rhondda Cynon Taf council is run by people who are mentally ill. They fear smokers and so terrified are they of ordinary people in their communities that they must make up some kind of derogatory name to make them sound like the worst kind of evil.

We are now Eco Criminals it seems.

This lady has just been harrassed and victimised by the council who, presumably, she pays to keep her streets clean with the amount of over inflated council tax that is supposed to be used for such things as clearing rubbish. Unless you are a smoker, of course, and they you have to pay twice as much as any one else just because the bullies can force you to.

This lady dropped a cig end. A biodegradeable cig end - like dropping a leaf. A smokerphobic jobsworth saw her and reported her. She says she picked it up and threw it away but that won't do. She's a smoker and they can lie and force money from her with menaces.

Now she is being blackmailed into paying for a crime she didn't commit or lose her freedom and be branded a criminal - and they've even designed a new name especially for smokers. She says she'll go to jail. I hope she does and I hope we can very quickly raise the money to get her out again and stick two fingers up to the council which really is the one that should be prosecuted because it attacks people it encourages others to hate. Hate Crime is an offence punishable by law so why is the council allowed to get away with this behaviour?

But what really got me about the council was this smokerphobic comment that has absolutely no basis in fact at all : "As well as creating unsightly environmental conditions, the offence can attract vermin."

Really? One dropped cig end?

What was that I said the other day about the next stage and criminalisation?

Pretentious, moi?

On an e-mail group, we were having a discussion about the Brunning & Price chain of pubs. While they have much to be said for them (not least in doing exactly what they say on the can) it cannot be denied that they have an unashamedly upmarket aspiration and ambiance. They’re not places for darts and doms and crib and meat raffles.

One correspondent said “we have never felt out of place, even when we staggered in after a long walk dressed in mud-stained walking gear.” But isn’t rambling the absolute acme of the pursuits of the comfortably-off, real ale slurping, slow food chomping, liberal middle class whom they are trying to attract? You have to wonder whether they might have received quite such a warm welcome had they wandered in wearing football shirts or motorcycle leathers.

Nice beer, shame about the pubs?

Last week, we were treated to an informative presentation by David Bremner, the Marketing Director of Stockport family brewer Robinson’s, in which he outlined the brewery’s plans for its beer range. These included tweaking the recipes of mainstream beers, more adventurous seasonal beers, short-run one-off “specials” and widening the bottled range, combined with a large-scale rebranding to give a more contemporary and less stuffy image. All music to the ears of the beer enthusiast.

However, he also made the point that focus groups had said that, while they recognised what Robinson’s were trying to do with their beers, all too often the pubs didn’t live up to that aspiration. In general they are either inner-urban and small town locals, or rural pubs that have increasingly gone over to dining. They conspicuously lack the kind of high-profile flagship pubs on sites with heavy footfall that have the potential to do well with an eclectic beer-drinking clientele. Many of them would struggle to sell any seasonal beer (and generally don’t even try), and very few can manage to shift anything more exotic than that. Do the brewery’s aspirations for their beers exceed what their pubs are capable of delivering?

Maybe it has to be accepted that a lot of pubs are, and are always going to remain, just “boozers”, and the scope for selling anything beyond the normal range of standard beers is extremely limited. I get the impression that quite a number of Robinson’s pubs would actually do better if they adopted the Samuel Smith’s business model of low prices, limited draught range and an unashamed pursuit of the traditional no-frills image.

THE HATE CONTINUES

Simon Clark over at Taking Liberties thinks the Department of Health's latest attack on smokers is a good thing because it may allow the issue of the fraudulent con of SHS to be brought back out for debate.

I wish I had his faith and I accept he is far more of an optimist than I am. But I don't see it that way. I see it as a corrupt dept led by unelected people with a mental phobia who have been given far too much power and now intend to push that further by wasting millions of our cash on state hate campaigns to finally finish us off.

Make no mistake this campaign, due to be launched in March, is the final step before the final solution which will be criminalisation. I base this assumption on what has gone before from a Govt that feels justified in attacking us, marginalisaing us and stigmatising us and allowing us to have absolutely no say in our own future - nor are we allowed to bring up our children as we want and give them the guidance they need on very important human issues such as tolerance.

Neither do these bigots even consider how a smoker lives - what considerations they give to family members who don't like smoke, where they smoke in their homes or cars or when and whether they smoke around the precious children who are now the property of the state and ASH Uk.

I guess I'll be in prison within five years just for being me when I know for a fact that I have never harmed a single person in my entire life.

IF ONLY ...

Thanks to The Devil's in the Detail I found the famous Peggy Noonan article in the Wall Street Journal written in 2002

People who come to this blog may have read it before but it was the first time I'd seen it although I had heard about it. Good honest writing has no shelf life and what Noonan says is as relevant now as it was then:

Why do liberals punish smokers? Could we discuss this? Is it that it makes them feel clean? Some parts of our culture in which liberals largely call the shots--Hollywood, for instance--are fairly low and degraded. Maybe liberals can't face this, and make themselves feel clean if they ban unclean air? Or maybe banning smokers makes them feel safe, like they'll never die.

Maybe it makes them feel in control. Maybe it makes them feel superior.

Or maybe they just want to bully someone.

I think the old Liberals are the NuProgressives who are taking us back to the Middle Ages on the one hand while enforcing perverted ideology on the other

Smokers have been dehumanised further in the 10 years since Noonan's article highlighted the danger of socially acceptable intolerance and as The Devil's in the Detail points out :

All any of us really want is to be left alone. I don't know if we can go back to just being people again but let us have our separate places,our separate lives and live them so we are in the end happy, we will take responsibility for ourselves if you all just go away.

That is the bottom line on this issue. Both sides can be accommodated and the health issue is just a smoke-screen to hide vile prejudices about people singled out for a kicking with Govt approval. I will never understand why choice - especially in our leisure time - is too much to ask. Leave us alone and we will not come within a mile of smokerphobics who do not deserve the amount of discriminatory legislation that Govt gives to pander to their mental phobia.

Smokerphobics really are an orchestrated minority and Govts should stop listening to them and putting them into positions of authority

Noonan, on the other hand, is representative of the real non-smoker and people like this are the ones who should be involved in any political decision that targets this particular cultural lifetyle group.

She says :

No, I don't smoke. I used to. I still have some feeling for my old messier, more anarchic self, but now I don't like the smell of smoke and don't think I'll ever go back to it. But that doesn't mean no one else can. And it doesn't mean I won't let you light up.

We should let the smokers back inside and treat them as if they're human, because they are. Until then I hope the smokers huddled together in the cold realize they're outside because of the modern liberals' war against being human. I hope they organize building to building and raise money to fight the prissy prohibitionists of politics, the Bloombergs and their ilk, who can't keep you safe from muggings or suitcase nukes but make believe they're being effective by keeping you safe from a Merit Ultralight.

The full article linked above is well worth a read if you haven't read it before. If you have then read it again and share it. Decent people - smokers, non-smokers, or never smokers - need to realise they have been duped into accepting the exclusion and punishment of fellow human beings who will do them no harm.

SOME LINKS

Dick Puddlecote on how Prohibition is never about health

The Angry Exile suggests ways of getting around plain packaging - or theft of industry trademarks by the Australian Govt

Matt Wardman over at Anna Raccoon on old news for the Independent stupid

Bella Gerens writes as eloquently as ever about how the so called Progressives are taking us back to the Middle Ages.

Smokers are finally welcome somewhere in the UK

Meanwhile fascist Australia finds new ways of punishing smokers and forcing hospitality businesses to turn them away

Leg Iron tells us that guilty smoker Nick Clegg has joined the path of Righteousness and quit

Belinda over at F2C Scotland tells us about innovative ways to use a natural organic material

The cultural art of tobacco uses 500,000 cigarettes to spread the anti-smoker's message

I see no ships

Apparently, the two-thirds pint “schooner” measure is being shunned by pubs. I had imagined that they would have been of particular interest to specialist beer pubs offering higher-ABV draught beers, but apparently not. I can’t say I’ve seen them on offer in a single pub. Indeed, the whole raft of changes in measures and beer duty that came in on 1 October have so far proved to be the dampest of damp squibs. 2.8% ABV Skol? Result!

Never coming back

I was saddened to see recently as I was passing that the Railway at Heatley near Lymm was in the process of being reduced to a pile of rubble. I wrote about it earlier here. This former Boddingtons’ house had been a long-standing Good Beer Guide entry and was one of the very few remaining traditional, multi-roomed pubs in the area. The main bar, with fixed wooden benches lining the walls facing the counter, was one of the most congenial drinking spaces I knew. And that particular part of the pub had been non-smoking by choice long before the ban. Most pubs I know that have closed have, to be honest, at least in their latter days, been pretty dismal. But this had been a damn good pub almost to the end. It featured in the 2008 Good Beer Guide, which was published at pretty much the same time as it closed.

It closed its doors forever in the Autumn of 2007 (I wonder what could have happened earlier that year to cause that – Ed). For a while it featured in the sidebar as a touchstone of whether we were going to see any kind of revival of the pub trade. But, despite being situated in a prosperous area with no shortage of nearby housing, it was not to be. None of these people who are always bleating about what great opportunities there still are in the pub trade were prepared to put their money where their mouth was and take it on. Now any chance of that happening has gone. Outside the urban bubble, this is the reality of what is happening to so many pubs in the wider world.

CALLS TO CRIMINALISE ADULT SMOKERS

As the fascist social engineers in Aryan Australia take the final step before criminalisation of a legal product and it's law abiding consumers, I see the UK smoke and mirrors jiggery pokery fakery to promote smokers as undesirables has started here too.

Of course stealing tobacco companies' historic trade marks, to be replaced by Big Pharma supported Tobacco Control's own logo graphic images in the land of Oz, is the last in the step-by-step approach towards tobacco eradication and making smokers criminals.

The Aussie plain packaging scandal is not meant to stop young people smoking. It's aim is to target and further humiliate adult smokers into quitting and the next necessary step towards making the product illegal. It seems pretty obvious to me that they must know this ill-thought-out knee jerk reactionary legislation will increase smuggling so they must want it to further stock up anti-smoker support towards the smoker's eventual criminalisation.

Once this legislation comes into effect, fake tobacco will hit the streets, poor estates, and children's parks. Man with a cheap bag will wait outside school gates. Smugglers will get richer and more violent and smokers will be blamed for it all. The stupid Govt that fights fire with fire, will make all tobacco possession illegal. It won't be able to weed out the criminal from the law abiding smoker and so will throw us all into the same pot. Bingo - what greater quit motivation than give up or go to prison. Job done.

Criminalisation of smokers will only make the vile Smokerphobics happy and give them a huge amount of perverse pleasure to know that smokers are suffering. No one else will benefit at all except Big Pharma's NRT business that will get richer.

Should this happen, the mental syndrome these people suffer from will just find a new focus. Fizzy drinks, perhaps, or burgers; perhaps beer will be the next target of their hypochondria-related phobia once they claim victory in having "dirty, filthy, selfish" smokers removed from their sight and their communities.

Here the Liverpool based anti-tobacco's Third Reich Dmyst is trying to make our Westminster bubble insulated Govt believe that people want law abiding UK smokers criminalised too and the group is already stocking up the armoury.

This minority tax payer funded group was established to promote fear and hatred of people who like smoking using children and young people as human shields to achieve the political and ideological aim of a smoke free world.

Dmyst represents a small number of people who have Smokerphobia - or Anti-Smoker Dysfunctional Syndrome (ASDS) to give it it's proper name - but claims somehow to speak for the general well-balanced majority.

Bearing in mind that Dmyst managed to pull together just 8,000 signatures to ensure smokers are excluded from open air** sports grounds in a city that has a population of 435,500 or more they did a grand job of pulling the wool over the two directors' eyes at Liverpool and Everton.

Not only has the enforcement of this smoke-free-by-force extremist ideology devastated the UK hospitality industry - and I could argue kick-started the general economic decline - but on the whim of an orchestrated minority, regular customers who were once welcomed and poured their hard earned cash into the ground for decades are now given no consideration when or if they attend.

Just imagine what our side could do if we had Dmyst's budget, Govt backing, an organisational structure rather than disorganised pissed off members of the public shouting about how unfair it all is with worn and hoarse voices. Imagine if we were treated fairly and equally and had their huge salaries to motivate us.

Dmyst really wouldn't stand a chance because the majority of British people hate extremism even those who hate smoking. Deep down the British are fair and tolerant and recognise that smokers are considerate or we wouldn't have accepted without any comment all of the restrictions placed upon us year on year over the last four decades.

We complain now because it's all gone too far. Enough is enough. Make room for us somewhere and live with it in your own space and we will stick to ours. Criminalisation is the line we will not allow Govt to cross. The anti-smoker industry can't force through the view that to defend our right to be left alone to enjoy a legal product in free association in the company of like minded friends is extremist - not yet anyway.

This is why Dmyst's poll asking for tobacco to be made illegal and smokers to be treated as smack heads is the next move on the agenda. Dmyst is aiming to get enough orchestrated support before the template of stupid bigoted Govt that knows nothing about smokers' lives follows in some new restrictive form which the antis see as yet another step towards the wet dream of a world without smokers.

See through the illusion and don't let Dmyst get away with yet another anti-smoker confidence trick. Follow the link to the series of anti-smoker polls and make your voice heard.

So far Dmyst's supporters are ahead in calling for criminalisation so in fairness and for a balanced result, share the poll among your own contacts, friends and sympathisers and tell the anti-smoker industry that it has had all it is going to get. No more!

** Not one study has ever been produced, and not once ounce of "evidence" exists, to show that smoking in the open air harms anyone at all including children who, in fact, appear to gain some sort of protection from indoor SHS which they have now been denied because of fraudulent political science to promote the 1970s delusion of a smoke free world by 2000.

LEST WE FORGET ...

...how inhumane humanity can be.

Today is to remember the futility of war, the deaths of those who fought for freedom as opposed to qualified freedom, and the civilian victims of such conflicts who no one stood up for until it was too late.





Never can such horror ever be allowed to happen again - even to the Palestinians - and just because the official Nazi Party no longer exists that doesn't mean the danger of race hatred and ethnic cleansing is gone.

The Israeli nation should know better than anyone about the sanctity of life and the respect of different cultures but when former PMs say things like : "The Palestinians should be crushed like grasshoppers - their heads smashed against boulders and walls..." it makes me fear that history at some near point in this modern future will be repeated somewhere in the Western world soon.



The Nazis gave nothing but hatred and puritanism to the world in terms of health and race and it is frightening to think there are nutters out there who praise Hitler's work

It is because Hitler invented the concept of SHS and set the template for modern tobacco control that I know it is evil and morally wrong. It comes from a perverted and twisted mind wracked by hatred and intolerance. It it what my grandfather and father fought against. Their lives, and those of the war dead, should not sacrificed on the bonfire of modern civil liberties for any old paid for excuse. Modern Govts should distance themselves instead of embracing any part of Nazi ideology as socially beneficial including smoke free. It never was good for anyone - ever - and never could be because it depends on socical division, exclusion and the promotion of fear and hatred to succeed.

It cannot be said with one breath that what Hitler did to the Jews and other "undesirables" was evil while saying in another that what he did to smokers was good - unless it comes from a mind that already thinks that some people deserve to be treated better than others based on who they are and what they do when it hurts no one else.

Lest We Forget - people died in harrowing circumstances to promote a brand of ideology that should be the template of all things to avoid rather than the template to rebuild society in the ideological perfect image of one of the worst butchers of humanity in modern times.

THE LINCOLN KANGAROOS

Geoffrey Morey with his pet kangaroo Pinto

Mark Wadsworth and Pavlov's Cat brought my attention to this story which reminded me of the Lincoln Kangaroos owned by former surgeon and amateur naturalist Geoffrey Morey who also discovered how aggressive they could be.

I guess it was his interest in wildlife that made him jump at the chance of owning two Kangaroos as pets back in 1962. They were brought to London by a young Australian man who had been offered free transport by the ship's captain.

The young man thought it would be a gesture of admiration to present them to the Queen on his arrival in London but unfortunately for him, as he was living in a London hotel with the two animals much to the consternation of the management, Her Majesty declined the gift, and he had to get rid of them elsewhere sharpish.

When Morey heard about his plight he thought he could help solve the problem by taking the marsupials off the young man's hands.

The surgeon ripped out the back seats of his car and covered the floor with straw. He was just about to set off for London to pick the kangaroos up when he heard they'd been snapped up by an Australian born City of London dignitary.

Morey was so pissed off about it he went to the press. The story reached Australia where a nurse who used to work with him when he was a medical student in Adelaide read about it and put him in touch with two families in a rural area who had kangaroos they wanted rid of.

The kangaroos were shoved into crates on a ship bound for Liverpool where Morey picked them up. They were lifted into the adapted back of his car and apparently sat there happily with their heads sticking out of the window, probably in shock, as he drove them home to his big house and garden in a posh part of Lincoln in the middle of a perishing winter.

Named Nardo and Pinto, the two kangaroos settled in well and began to breed quite quickly. Morey was one of few people at that time to have witnessed a joey coming out of it's mother's pouch. In 10 years, the Morey family had up to five male and female kangaroos living in the garden, the house and a specially made kennel although three joeys died before they reached adulthood.

Nardoo tried to escape a few days after her arrival and broke her leg. Morey called for help from his medical friends at Lincoln County Hospital. The orthopedic surgeon and his registrar, general surgeons, physicians, anesthetists, radiologists and four Lincoln vets volunteered and the surgery was carried out at Morey's house.

The kangaroos did get out of Morey's high walled garden eventually while he was travelling in Africa. He heard news while in Nairobi of how the city police had to call out 20 officers in the early hours of the morning to join those on foot and in cars already on duty to round them up.

After three hours of chasing them up and down Lincoln High Street the police got the kangaroos home and warned Morey that more escapes would lead to them applying for his removal from the city.

Morey also found out how aggressive male kangaroos could be. One named after the original Pinto, who died after eating too much of a poisonous yew hedge in the garden, changed almost overnight after the birth of a male joey. He grabbed Morey in a tight hug unexpectedly one day that left him breathless. The doctor managed to break free after a fierce wrestling match.

As Pinto the Second became more aggressive and unreliable Morey packed him off to a zoo. When people found out that one of the famous kangaroos was leaving the pack offers flooded in which included a family that knew nothing about kangaroos but wanted one as a pet, and a circus owner who wanted one to box for entertainment.

The story of The Lincoln Kangaroos ends with Morey's book published in 1962. I've asked around locally and no one can remember him except one friend who recalls as a child looking over the wall from the top of an open top bus. Kids, apparently, tried to climb the walls for a glimpse of the animals.

Another friend tells me there used to be what she called "Washingborough Wallabies" in a field in a village near Lincoln but they've been gone a long time and whether they were kangaroos and not wallabies and related to Morey's originals is desperate speculation.

Maybe someone who knows more than I do about what happened to Geoffrey Morey and his kangaroos almost 60 years ago will stumble across this post as it floats around the internet and enlighten us all as to how the family's story ended.

Retreating into a niche

Stockport town centre, depending on how you define it, currently has about 30 pubs open and trading. There are four or five standing closed and boarded and realistically unlikely to open as pubs, and a further ten or so that have closed their doors forever over the past ten or fifteen years and been demolished or converted to alternative use. A pattern that is fairly typical of large towns up and down the country.

For various reasons, Stockport isn’t renowned for its lively night-life and, being honest, although a few do well, many of those 30 are existing on very thin pickings. Two that are thriving, though, are the well-known specialist beer pubs, the Crown and the Magnet, which are only about four hundred yards apart near the bus station. Indeed, to get to either from the bus station you have to pass the very prominently-sited, and firmly closed and boarded, George.

Both these pubs are to be congratulated on doing well in a declining market, but it would be a mistake from that to conclude that a lot of other pubs would benefit from adopting that particular trading format. They are catering well for a substantial, but still ultimately limited, market of beer enthusiasts. Indeed it could be said of the customers of the Crown and Magnet that they are people for whom going to pubs and sampling different beers is a specific hobby that they pursue, rather than just something they do as part of the normal routines of everyday life.

So it could well be that in future the overall pub market continues to shrink substantially year-on-year, but the specialist beer pubs continue to thrive by catering specifically for beer enthusiasts. And those beer enthusiasts, and even people who just like the atmosphere of pubs in general, will increasingly gravitate towards those pubs as they alone will offer the choice of beers, and the congenial company, that they are looking for.

I have written in the past of the future of the pub trade (or the “wet” pub trade anyway) being one of increasingly retreating into a small urban niche. And you can see it happening before your own eyes in Stockport.

First they came for the Special Brew drinkers

Well, I said that High Strength Beer Duty would be just the start, and it now looks as though they’re planning to extend the principle to wine. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, in the next two or three years, they come back and have another bite at the beer cherry. Given that there aren’t really any mass-market beers in the range from 5% to 7.5%, I would expect to see the cut-off point at 4.5% or even 4.0%. Enjoy that Pendle Witches Brew while you can...

(H/t to Leg-iron)

FORAGING MUSHROOMS

I've been out foraging during the last few weeks which gives me a reason to get up early when I have no work. Walking in fields on crisp sunny mornings puts a smile on my face and I get a real buzz when I find free food.

We still have wine fermenting and loads of jars of jam made from foraged fruit we found last last summer. Now we're into autumn we're finding wild mushrooms ripe for picking in plentiful supply in neighbouring fields.

I must admit, though, my other half will be glad when the season's over. He's getting a bit fed up of home made mushroom soup daily and something with mushrooms every night for tea.

We did spot some of these beauties :

If I'd mixed those into any of my recipes then both my other half and me would be chasing white rabbits all night. My mates who come foraging with us reckoned they were poisonous but it seems not in a way that will kill you if the dose is right

The magic variety of mushroom - the liberty cap - is no longer legal to pick. The local council used to spray commons and local beauty spots to kill them so the hippies couldn't have fun and as I haven't seen any on these morning walks, I wondered if they'd all been killed off.

I do think it's wrong to destroy these things and I hope councils think hard before they do go all knee-jerk reactionist in response to any sightings.

Even magic mushrooms are all part of the fauna and flora after all. The author of the website where I found information on the Alice in Wonderland Fly Agaric says some of the root systems they grow from have been there for hundreds of years and it's quite arrogant for councils to just nuke them because the idea of hallucinogens growing naturally doesn't fit political anti-drugs ideology.

I suppose they can't keep telling us the planet is so valuable, wildlife is so vital, and the food chain and natural order of things needs to be maintained at all costs while selecting which bits of nature to make extinct because it suits them.

Meanwhile, I'll be researching what other food can be found free in the countryside in the time I have left to get out there and look for it. I reckon my foraging fun will be over come the end of the month as dark and gloomy December kicks in and the frost in the morning begins to bite.

LIARS WHO SPREAD FILTH

The antis are regressive. Technology can find a solution to soothe their phobic fears

I suppose this is good news of a sort but really the main points to come out of this trial are that James Repace is a lying scumbag and the law can stop you smoking in your own home when you pose no risk to anyone.

Repace is the smokerphobic who invented a dodgy machine that came along at the same time that the anti-smoker industry looked for an excuse to turn the screws tighter on smokers.

It allegedly shows the level of carbon in the atmosphere and the fact that Repace's machine measured carbon in a courtroom where no one was smoking is evidence, if it shows anything at all, that carbon is around us everywhere from other sources at levels that don't harm anyone at all - including those of SHS.

Unfortunately Repace, probably because of his mental phobia about smokers, tried to persuade everyone that they are all in danger everywhere just because a smoker is about - even outside.

The Judge in this case of a greedy neighbour looking to try and make a fast buck from another resident in a street of townhouses ruled :

... David Schuman deserved no compensation for his claim that his neighbor’s secondhand smoke created a nuisance that Greenbelt Homes Inc. (GHI) failed to solve.

It's just a shame the judge wasn't courageous enough to rule that the hyped up SHS scam is a fraud and Repace proved it. But then why would he when he believes the crap himself? The judge lays his sister's lung cancer at the feet of smoking without mentioning that she was unlucky not to be among the 92% of smokers who don't get it or if she never smoked that she was among the unlucky 17%. Neither does he stop to think what other factors may have been responsible. It's convenient and easy to blame smoking and that's fine until the fraud moves to the smoker with a view to ostracising him or her from their neighbours, friends and work colleagues.

Because the Judge's father smoked, he lays all his adult ailments on that. It's such a shame they didn't get an impartial judge but at least Northropp wasn't a raging Smokerphobic.

Sadly, instead, he decided to force a smoker out of his own home with not an ounce of compassion or encouragement of tolerance.

Most of the comments on the linked article above are fair except for one raging loon Lisa Thill whose bile would be worthy of a top place in Dick Puddlecote's psychotic smokerphobic list of fruitcakes.

The judge based on his own reservations about smoking tried to be fair but people like Repace who gain financially by harassing smokers, and Thill, who takes perverse pleasure in being abusive to smokers, are just foul and frankly the law and Govt should not be wasting cash and time humouring them. But then there is money in law suits, I suppose, and smokers are easy and vulnerable targets after all.

Of course this case will now be used in the battle to commit the perfect Third Hand Smoke fraud - designed to make smokers homeless, unemployable, and isolated, the real motive behind it's invention.

Bitter harvest

Apparently, Call Me Dave reckons that the smoking ban has been a success.

Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Cameron said: “As a former smoker and someone who believes strongly in liberties and someone who did not support it at the time, it has worked.”

Someone who believes strongly in liberties? Come on, pull the other one. And in what way has it “worked”? The long-term decline in the proportion of smokers in the population has actually slowed, while thousands of pubs have shut and their licensees and staff been deprived of their livelihoods. As he tours the country, does he see the legions of closed and boarded pubs and smugly think to himself “what a success”?

In contrast, no prizes for guessing which North-West MEP said the following:

Pubs are local parliaments and are a very important part of our society. Once the traditional pubs have gone they will never return.

There is no simple answer, but it is certainly time to rethink the smoking ban. The political powers of this country dealt pubs an absolute hammer blow four years ago with the total smoking ban. It has taken 20% off pub takings.

Well, absolutely, spot on Mr Nuttall.

OUR GOVT SUPPORTS HATE CRIME

I was completely shocked to read the story of how a hospitalised smoker in Canada was forced out into Arctic temperatures where she was overcome with hypothermia and had to have amputations as a result of this cruelty.

All of those people who care so much about the health of smokers that they must force them to quit for their own good were out in force to criticise the hospital for treating someone in need of care and compassion worse than a convicted child murderer.

Or at least they would be if this was really about health and not hate as Chris Snowdon so eloquently describes over at Velvet Glove, iron fist

The swivel-eyed Govt-backed Smokerphobic fascists are out in force to make their views known about this tragic and completely unavoidable incident and it's obvious that they will only ever be appeased if smokers are treated as the undesirables in the Nazi era.

And as Chris says, govts are completely responsible for this vile state of affairs because of the billions of our cash they have poured into propaganda to create hate, fear and loathing of a group they do not want as part of their society. They have excluded us and called open season for bigots to attack us in any way they see fit.

Or as Chris puts it :

Governments have a responsibility to quell tensions and defuse conflict in society. In no other area of life does government deliberately create and inflame hostility. Like so many other failed tobacco control policies, the doctrine of denormalisation is counter-productive and damaging because it is the brain-child of a small group of emotional zealots, some of whom are operating at a sub-optimal level of mental health themselves. It's time for the government to put the tobacco control freaks behind them and chart a new course before things get really
nasty.

Because our health minister Anne Milton is in the pocket of these loons at ASH Uk, and she doesn't listen to both side of this debate preferring to base policy on prejudice while encouraging hatred of smokers with untrue propaganda I thought the time had come for her to be sacked.

We need an impartial minister, male or female, smoker or non-smoker, who will talk to BOTH sides to find a solution to how we can begin to get along and someone who will look with a fair and unbiased mind at all the evidence and not just that selected by one biased group whose only purpose is to encourage hatred of a minority group in line with their zealous beliefs.

With this in mind, I have today submitted an E-Petition that reads along these lines :

SACK HEALTH MINISTER ANNE MILTON

Health minister Anne Milton is destroying the Govt's aim of reducing the amount of people who smoke by alienating smokers. She allows evidence to be manipulated for ideological rather than health reasons. She is too close to the political lobby group ASH uk and allows this unelected and unaccountable group to make policies of hate against smokers. Milton is not impartial. By ignoring both sides of this debate, in favour of one, she is creating real fear and misery among the UKs 15 million consumers of a legal highly taxed product who want a health minister to make fair legislation based on views from BOTH sides. Milton is in the pocket of ASH and she should go to be replaced by someone who looks at the issue fairly in the round and makes policy for smokers based not on hate, misinformation and fraudulent evidence but rather a sensible and fair approach based on real evidence to reduce smoking prevalence.

Apparently, it takes seven days for an e-petition to be reviewed and accepted. Somehow I doubt this one will be acpeted but it should. If this issue really is about health and not hate then Milton must go.

Meanwhile, if you think this E-Petition should be better worded then please leave your thoughts in the comments because if turned down, I will resubmit it until someone takes notice.