DON'T LET COUNCILS BULLY YOU

Here's a piece of good news to take us into the New Year and something that all smokers should be aware of as local authorities try and use bully-boy tactics to force smokers out of their communities as discrimination against them continues unabated.

Freedom2Choose has revealed that councils have no legal powers to stop people smoking in the open air although in Coventry at least, they will be forming Nagging or Bullying Policies in a bid to deny smoker council tax payers from using the very facilities they pay for.

They believe that Nagging smokers into submission justifies the discrimination they use against law abiding people they want to exclude from their communities.

So if approached by some Jobsworth paid to harass you if you smoke, your response should be that you are not breaking the law and they should just go away. But even though they may put you under severe provocation through their harassment, don't bite because they can then criminalise you under public order offences if you raise your voice or take issue with them.

Just be polite, smile and continue enjoying your cigarette** and tell the Jobsworth that you are breaking no laws and such council policy has no basis in law. In fact, ask them to quote what part of the Health Act 2006 they are using to stop you acting legally because they simply won't be able to tell you.

Meanwhile, as this awful fourth year of the ban is almost over, The Resistance fight continues and the anti-smoker fascists are being exposed further as their fraudulent junk science is revealed as not standing up to scrutiny

Let's hope 2012 is the year when discrimination ends against our lifestyle group and others and that the Govt starts actually funding patient care in the NHS and not propaganda designed by the bigoted ASH.

Don't forget that in Labour's term of office ONE BILLION POUNDS was thrown into the anti-smoker black hole of TV propaganda and various smoke free groups that were dying on their feet before this immoral piece of legislation was enforced through threat of criminal prosecution.

That money could have been so much better used in public service in all sorts of ways

** And don't forget to use your own pocket ashtrays.

ALL PARENTS ARE CHILD ABUSERS - LCH

Readers of this blog should have guessed by now that I am no fan of the NuNHS which literally throws away millions of our cash on unworthy causes like lifestyle control while turning it's back and refusing to treat those who do actually pay very high taxes to ensure their healthcare in future when they need it.

I particularly despise Lincoln County Hospital because it killed my mum and so I was really worried when my new eight week old baby grandson had to go recently after an accident. I was right to be concerned.

Daughter No 3 is an excellent mum and the healthly, happy, contented nature of my (almost) five year old grand daughter is testament to the very good care that my daughter and her partner give as loving, dedicated parents who make mistakes just like any other human being.

In a moment's oversight, my daughter put the baby on a hard backed dining chair as she stood behind him with two hands holding him. She took one away for a second to reach for his bottle as she was about to feed him. In that second he fell off the chair, she couldn't catch him in time, and he fell and smacked his little head on a hard laminated floor.

It swelled up immediately and my daughter and her partner of seven years were distraught and besides themselves at what had happened. They already felt responsible enough. Within 15 minutes he was at hospital and that is where the real nightmare began.

The doctors and nurses at LCH were more concerned that she was a child abuser who had battered her baby than they were about his health. She was traumatised because of his injury and wracked with fear that this powerful organisation, grilling both parents and trying to confuse them about what happened, would take her children from her as they inferred this was a case for Social Services to investigate.

They kept her in for three days not because of my grandson's injury but because they wanted to watch and monitor her every move.

Even worse was that someone, somewhere in that hospital, has obviously made a mistake - or the hospital is simply lying and trying to confuse my daughter - when they claim falsely that she gave "three different stories as to how he came by his accident."

No! She gave one story, as recounted above, and she has never faltered from that. Why would the hospital tell such lies?

We are all aware of cases like Baby P and Maria Coldwell years earlier and in fact do support methods of trying to ensure that abused babies are protected.

My daughter despite the trauma and finger pointing even said she was glad that the hospital takes this stance because she never wants to see another tragedy happen to another baby who falls through the Social Services' net.

But why in ensuring protection for babies does the hospital have to take the stance that all parents are child abusers and all babies need protection from them without at least offering some sort of support for those they unjustly accuse?

Why do they either not be more discreet about their suspicions, so they so not add to the distress of already grieving and worried parents after such a dramatic accident, or at least provide proper advocacy services for such parents they treat so appallingly.

My grandson had a full body scan (for old injuries) which upset my daughter a lot because "old injuries" on one so very young implies that she beats him regularly. He also had a head scan to check on his injury. So far my daughter has received the results that show he has never received any other injury in his short life but she still waits for the results of - and is still worried about - the head injury that took him to hospital in the first place.

Instead of getting these results that she has waited anxiously for, she got instead a visit from social services to her home today again repeating the lying allegation that she told three stories about how her son fell.

Even worse, is that she was told that we all now face investigation. If they believe my daughter to be a child abuser, then they believe it must be because me and my other half, and her partner's mum and dad, must have abused them.

And let's not forget that the "abuse" which never happened but simply lies in the imagination and paranoia of hospital staff will now appear on some sort of written record to be used against my daughter's family in future.

My grandson is a boy. He is bound to come to some of rough and tumble injury in future as he grows up and if he does have another accident in childhood, then Social Services and the hospital will use this non-event as "evidence" that there must abuse in the family because Social Services have had to visit before.

Indeed, my baby grandson's dad as a young boy had an playtime accident that damaged his head. Back in those days parents got what they deserved and needed - care, compassion, sympathy, and reassurance. Lincoln County Hospital should be providing this first and foremost and if they have any doubts they should do the decent thing and provide an independent advocacy service such as Parentline or their own health visitor, who knows the family better than any on-shift medic, so that those like my daughter can at least have someone professional to speak up on their behalf and get answers to questions they need such as :"Will my child be OK?".

The truth is that the hospital and the NHS generally is picking on good parents because they can't get the bad ones. To help them live with their conscience on failing to stop the deaths of the baby P's, they pick on those who are easy to bully to make themselves feel better.

Bad parents who smack a child so hard they break it's skull will not take the child to hospital for fear of being exposed. The hospital and our social services can't do the job right so they do it badly and offensively.

While hospitals protect our children from us, who is protecting our children from them and our elderly from being killed by NHS neglect and those murdering medics who slip through their ever so selective net?

I think the NHS should get it's own house in order and put in place systems of interrogation of its own staff to ensure that no more babies die while in NHS care.

Meanwhile, I have telephoned the hospital to register a formal complaint. After ages of waiting to be put through to "complaints" I ended up speaking to an answering machine.

My view is the NHS does not care. It can only bully. It has become a vile organisation.

DIVIDE AND CONQUER OR FIRST STEP BACK?

The announcement by the Govt's bully unit that it will take the jackboot off E-cigs is news to be welcomed but also greeted with concern by those of us who enjoy a traditional smoke.

It's a sensible harm reduction move for those who don't want to quit the cultural act of smoking but do want to give up natural tobacco. However, my problem is a cynical fear that E-cigs will be used as a further "divide and conquer" weapon in the war on big Tobacco and its consumers who don't want to switch over to any form of NRT.

I'm also a little ill at ease that the Govt is backing one private industry supplier of nicotine over another. It feels dirty.

E-cigs made widely and cheaply available and pushed as "a responsible alternative" to smoking are bound to be effective in forcing tobacco smokers further down into a minority. And then what next?

I know there are vapers out there standing firmly in our defence but there are also some who do see themselves as superior to tobacco smokers because they have taken that "responsible" harm reduction option while "selfish" smokers still stick to the "dirty, filthy habit" that they have wriggled free of.

I agree with DP that there is little point in making E-cigs "acceptable" if there is no where they can be "acceptably" used in public. Used indoors could lead to smokers being welcomed back inside too and I'd hope that decisions taken on where E-cigs can be used will also include where tobacco products can be used.

The trouble is, of course, both products won't be treated equally and neither will the respective companies' consumers. Destruction of the tobacco industry is continuing, and loons are still trying to impose outdoor bans if others fail.

If the Govt encourages greater public respect and tolerance for vapers while continuing the denormalisation and exclusion of smokers, well, I'm sure I for one would feel even more marginalised. The news today from the Bully Unit has certainly made me feel a step more stigmatised.

MORE JUNK SCIENCE FROM NUTTERS

source of image

Tea and cigarettes is still my favourite combination despite news that smoking and coffee is good to stave off Parkinson's Disease.

Unfortunately, the self-interest "scientists" (and I use that term loosely), have no idea what it's like to be a smoker, or how smoking affects people who smoke. They imagine in their heads, based on the years of misinformation and fraudulent junk studies, what it's like based on what they have been fed by previous "research" - a term over used to give credence to trash which could just as easily be made up by my over imaginative four year old grand daughter.

But then I've come to the conclusion that nearly all of this health scaremongering is complete and utter tosh especially given the new piece of junk science research that says Obesity harms fatties and others around them

Now that the hate campaign against smokers has been legitimised it is a natural next step for the fascists to look for the next target for public humiliation and social exclusion and this latest piece of made up fiction takes a sinister turn. The lie of passive smoking has now been reframed to enable what will no doubt be future social exclusion of fatties. They should be prosecuted not given cash for fraudulent "research" and "science".

Frankly on these issues "science" should be banned and not the selective groups it targets to make Big Pharma richer and allow these so called "scientists" to profit from the misery they are creating for law abiding people who just want to be left alone to live their lives without fear or prejudice.

Of course they use the excuse that they "just want to save lives". I'd believe it if they didn't excuse all of the lives lost from drugs pushed at them by Big Pharma lackeys like ASH UK

The bigoted Clive Bates from that organisation says it's OK for people to die from smoking cessation drugs "because most of these people would have died anyway". It would quite laughable if his ignorance wasn't so serious. For an organisation that scrounges public money so that its leaders can stuff their faces with health foods, he shouldn't be prepared to excuse the drugs that he pushes that kill them like Zyban and Champix.

This hypocritical and socially damaging ideology has wrecked our long held British social tradition of meeting in a pub, the civilised ambience of eating out, choice, freedom and democracy and even though there are calls for the Govt to step in and save our pubs it isn't going to happen because getting rid of the traditional British pub is part of this NuSocial engineering project of which ASH is the head.

What the issue of smoking certainly needs is more balanced voices and an open mind and fair Govt that is willing to listen to all sides of the debate and not just the one it funds to lobby itself for the result it wants by claiming to the wider public that corrupt bullies like ASH are "charities".

ASH gets just 0.2% of its total funding from the public - and that tiny minority of cash which wouldn't even enable ASH to rent it's own office for one year - probably comes from the unsupported, unpopular smokerphobes who obviously have mental health issues.

When fairness and balance comes back to the debate about smoking, only then can fatties be sure that they will be heard and the hate campaign against them will stop, and the wine o'clocks won't face a future of being described in worse terms than Josef Frizel

If these so called "scientists" really want to make their living on the back of causing misery for others, they should switch the focus of their research to find out exactly what makes someone a smokerphone and where exactly that irrational fear of smokers comes from.

Maybe then they can design a very expensive drug to make these weirdos "normal" like the rest of us.

COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON

Santa when smokers were friends


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BBC VICTIMISES THE POOR AND VULNERABLE

From Big Brother Watch comes the photo above and a piece about how the BBC uses threat and force to intimidate people on the grounds that they are guilty of not having a TV licence before it's been determined whether they have a TV or not.

It brought to mind a phone call I got the other week from a young mum who was terrified that she would be picked up and locked up on her child's birthday because she had been convicted and fined for not having a TV licence when she knew nothing about it.

As someone who has no money other than what lasts half a week - basically enough to feed her child and the gas and electric meter - she has nothing left for any kind of pleasure - not even a bar of chocolate.

She probably shouldn't watch TV because it's against the law to do so without a licence - as is using a computer without a TV Licence also - but she simply cannot afford it.

When you're poor, little things like sitting down and watching CBeebies with your child for pleasure is a simple luxury that in this technological age is surely not too much to expect.

Sadly it is for TV Licensing who send the bullies round to intimidate such young families because they can. They can waste acres and acres of newsreel telling their viewers how much they care about the poor and vulnerable both here and abroad and the BBC is terribly biased about those things which it perceives could harm "the poor" like smoking and drinking.

But it has no qualms at all about threatening, bullying, intimidating and imprisoning those on low income when it wants it's very unfair share of their very limited cash.

The young mum caught without a licence once already paid a heavy price in a huge fine that she is still paying off. Because of this BBC greed, she would have to sit half the week without heating or light, or without food, just so the multi-million pound organisation can have its pound of flesh for the utter rubbish and Govt propaganda it spews out. It also needs to steal from the poor to pay the rich and fund the likes of Jonathan Ross's personal millions.

Luckily, she has managed to keep borrowing from Peter to pay Paul to keep the BBC off her back but then without warning, she suddenly received a letter from her local court telling her a warrant for her arrest had been issued because she failed to appear in court on a second charge of watching a TV without a licence.

She was hysterical and extremely upset because she had not had a second visit from TV Licensing, she received no court summons, and by the time she received a letter the warrant had been issued and the police were set to arrest her. If she had been unlucky enough to get picked up at the end of the week, she might have to wait until the Monday for her case to be heard. That would have meant two days locked up without having been convicted fairly of any crime at all. Yes, we really do lock up the innocent in this country simple because they have no money.

Her biggest fear was that she would either be arrested by police outside of the school gates or on the child's birthday the day after she called me.

I advised her to get a solicitor immediately, to ring the court and explain, and it appears the warrant has now been withdrawn but she will still face a court appearance when no one from TV Licensing even checked whether she still had a TV or not. They tried her and convicted her in their own minds without even bothering to see if there was any evidence to support such a conviction.

The BBC should not charge any fee. It is state broadcasting and does not work on behalf of the public but simply acts as a mouthpiece for the state.

It is a hypocrite pretending to care for the poor and vulnerable and yet being one of the worst offenders when it comes to using its great power to bully them into submission.

We are in an age of multi channel television. There can be no excuse for supporting the BBC when it does not support its audience. The BBC should advertise like everyone else. Not one ounce of quality would be lost if it did. It doesn't have any morals, it cares not about truth. It's time it was abolished and it fended for itself like it expects from so many young and vulnerable families it steals from.

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

ONLY THE IRISH ....

I hear that the NuGovt is to abolish the ASBO.

In Ireland, it appears they have their own way of dealing with anti social behaviour.

I really don't approve of such action but I guess it's more effective than the current ASBO Badge Of Honour handed out in towns and cities across the mainland.