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

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

THAT'S A NEW ONE

Goodness me. I've heard some excuses for people liking the blanket smoking ban. It used to be about health but since the spiteful law was imposed, it suddenly became about the smell that anti-smokers don't like.

I've followed this propaganda through from the start and smell was an early one they tried to use to get stupid politicians to impose a draconian ban. When I was in my teens, early 20s and before 1997, our politicians weren't so stupid because this argument from the antis was always beaten down.

Our leaders said rightly at the time that if we legislated against all things we didn't like the smell of, there would be little left that we could do. They also said smell was not enough of a reason to take away civil liberties and it must be without doubt proved that passive smoking harms others.

It is only then that the antis set their sights on manipulating scientific data to "prove" their case. Even then they had to wait for the right stupid and prejudicial politicians to come along and NuLab was their gift. I must admit I saw the ban coming when Cherie Blair moved into No 10 and her OCD meant that poor Humphrey the Downing Street Cat got the boot because of her obsessive health phobia. If she thought cats would kill her then I guessed she would also be a smokerphobic and Tony did what the Mrs told him, after all.

While debating the smoking ban the other day with some colleagues, I found that one of them, an occasional smoker, was completely against the smoking ban and wished me well with my endeavours. In fact most people I speak to on a daily basis, both smokers and non-smokers agree choice, balance, and respect for both sides of this debate, is the right way forward. Only the anti-smokers and phobics would deny the smoker the right to choose to smoke somewhere they are not.

The reason another of my colleagues gave me for why he loved the ban was because he didn't have to hear people coughing anymore. Is this reason six million and ninety two for them to hate us even more? As an excuse for maintaining the blanket smoking ban without any amendment to allow for choice, it's one I'd never heard before, and one of the most disgusting.

WHY SHOULD I QUIT SMOKING!

There I was on a beautiful sunny day in the middle of nowhere talking to a very nice chap from the RSPB about a wetland project when my mobile rang with an invitation to go live on air and talk about why I refuse to quit smoking.

On one side was Dr Wendy Richardson, who had loads of predictable, offensive, and inflammatory things to say and the other was me just trying to stick up for myself and other smokers.

Anyone who wants to listen in can find the link to BBC Radio Humberside's Peter Levy show The debte between the good doctor and myself comes about half way through.

Now I'm about to disappear for a few days again as the annual festival I work at starts today. EcoFest is held in the beautiful Lincolnshire Wolds. There will be great music and a great atmosphere and I can't wait.

* I should say for the sake of clarity that the radio interview had nothing to do with the RSPB but I was out on a job for a feature I've written about their project when the call came through.

TICAP AND FUN IN AMSTERDAM

Thanks to Dick Puddlecote I can now create tidy links but that wasn't the only thing I learned at the TICAP conference held last Monday at the Hague in the Netherlands. I also heard from eminent scientists and doctors about how the anti-smoking lies gained credence.

The organisations like ASH UK and ASH US knew they didn't have evidence so what they did was to continually send out biased and inflated information to a beleagured press which didn't have the resources to do any more than take their word for it.

Michael McFadden who wrote the excellent book "dissecting anti-smokers' brains" told of how the anti-smoking industry claims that living with a smoker greatly increases the chances of a non-smoker getting lung cancer is designed to create fear and prejudice. In truth, the real stats show that the increase in risk is so small it is neglible which is what professor Richard Doll said. He was the first to link active smoking with cancer but he also said passive smoking was something that carried no real risk to non-smokers. It was something, he said, that we shouldn't fear.

McFadden gave the true stats. It appears that the risk goes up from 4/1000 to 5/1000 after 40 YEARS which really doesn't justify the exlcusion of smokers from every indoor public place.

Other speakers of interest were David Goerlitz. He worked for the JR Reynolds tobacco company in the 1980s and his job was to attract younger smokers to replace those that died or gave up. He felt his work was immoral and so he joined the anti-smoking industry and visited schools to persuade kids not to take up the habit. It is because of what he saw as corrupt science used by the anti-smoking industry that paid for the results it wanted that he now speaks against the corrupt tactics they use.

Goerlitz believes that it is wrong to smoke but he also believes that when the risks are known, it is up to adult smokers to make their own life choices and they should not be discriminated against because of it. He is against the use of junk science to achieve an ideological aim, and he doesn't agree that smokers should be persecuted for their lifestyle choice. This is why he has left the anti-smoking movement and he now works to expose its lies and corruption.

Dr Kamal Chaouachi, from the University of Paris, spoke about hookah pipe smoking. He said the Muslim community has smoked the pipe for centuries and it is very much a part of their social culture. He said Muslims across the world are angry at the way hookah smoking is manipulated by the anti-smoking industry. It has produced posters showing smoke billowing from the pipe which doesn't even use tobacco. It is a mixture of charcoal and flavours and it has no "side stream smoke". To show it in anti-smoking posters in a bid to create the same kind of fear and prejudice goes against the Koran which says there should be good science from cradle to grave - and not junk science created to achieve an ideological aim.

I found it a great concern and tragedy that Dr Chaouachi was warned by tobacco control colleagues that should he speak at this conference, then he would be discredited, shunned and his career would be jeapordised. He is a brave man. He believes truth is important and those scientists who create reports to achieve the aim their anti-smoking paymasters want should be exposed and embarrassed for their outrageous claims. He says this will end the use of junk science.

I attended with two friends - one works in a pub an the other is an independant pub landlady fighting to survive in a pub where all the customers and staff smoke. We stayed in Amsterdam, keen to check out the smoking policy there. It was quite bizarre. Most establishments discreetly allowed the smoking of tobacco - even if it had to be rolled under ths table while marijunana was clearly displayed and rolled on tables. Other establishments banned tobacco smoking but allowed hash to be smoked throughout.

I took my new digital camera with me. I'm not much of a photographer but I thought it was time I got to grips with new photographic technology instead of using my outated film loaded Olympus. I bought a cheap one so that I could learn how to handle it before gettng one of better quality. Unfortunately, this meant that most of my photos were blurred. The shot above of a pretty building in Amsterdam was one of three that turned out clearly.

I was approached by a couple of people with interesting offers after the conference. One I would be keen to follow up. It concerns a forthcoming conference in India. The other didn't interest me at all. It was about rumour mongering. Another thing I learned in the Hague was that the pro-choice movement doesn't need to tell lies - we have right and truth on our side.

NICOTINE VEGETABLES

I thought I'd use this information sent to my inbox today in a new post as the others invaded by Baz are getting a bit cumbersome, and , indeed, not entirelty related to any particualr post but debated generally.

Mandy V sent this through and it makes interesting reading.

She writes :

The vegan analogy is interesting, as far as I am aware, no-one is banned from opening a vegan restaurant are they?
I am over 50 and never been in hospital, (apart from having babies).
It is years since I stepped inside the doctors surgery also.
I work with some elderly people who by some miracle are still alive and kicking and smoking.
Shoving the elderly outside (old peoples homes) to smoke is the most evil thing out of this ban.

It is bad enough pubs and clubs and others who were happy to cater for smokers and non-smokers are closing down because this was forced upon them.
If, nicotine is so addictive, why are drug commpanies allowed to sell products that give false information, ie the percentage of people giving up with them?
Intolerance sure as hell is not healthy either -http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2007/250407antismoking.htm

I am also a smoker and feel like a criminal/leper or whatever the new fad name is for smokers nowadays, for enjoying something that is not illegal.
I hate the thought of going to parties and pubs/clubs anymore.

Just out of interest, are Vegans addicted to vegetables from the same plant family as tobacco?
The Nicotine Content of Common Vegetables

Vegetable Nicotine in ng/g g per 1µg nicotine
Cauliflower 16.8 59.5
Eggplant (Aubergine) 100.0 10
Potatoes 7.1 140
Green tomatoes 42.8 23.4
Ripe tomatoes 4.3 233.0
Pureed tomatoes 52.0 19.2
Rose


"The term "niacin" used interchangeably with vitamin B3 is actually a non-technical term that refers to several different chemical forms of the vitamin. These forms include nicotinic acid and nicotinamide. (Nicotinamide is also sometimes called niacinamide.) The names "niacin," "nicotinic acid," and "nicotinamide" are all derived from research studies on tobacco in the early 1930's. At that time, the first laboratory isolation of vitamin B3 occurred following work on the chemical nicotine that had been obtained from tobacco leaves."