Simple Simon Blatantly Lies To Australia

As I touched on in the last article, the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) yesterday decided to continue with their ban on e-cigs containing nicotine. Part of their flawed reasoning cited evidence from the US which is hardly surprising.

You see, one of the prime Australian 'experts' in tobacco control Down Under is the vandal-turned-clown Simple Simon Chapman, whose prejudice against e-cigs runs so deep that he has scoured the globe for straws to clutch in his attempt to obstruct vaping.

Increasingly he has been drawn to the US where the CDC continues to lie about the subject by classifying e-cigs as a "tobacco product" despite containing no tobacco. That way, they are able to pretend that tobacco use remains unchanged as more youth vape and fewer smoke.

I highlight 'tobacco use' because it is a clever manipulation of statistics, however it's quite clear when you look into the data that youth smoking in the US has been falling to record low levels. For example, here is a graph taken from CDC data by Reason's Jacob Sullum in April last year.

Yesterday, though, Chappers appeared on Australian national broadcaster ABC's PM show and declared this to the nation.

"The fall in youth smoking that we saw for many many years in the United States last year, for the first time, stopped falling; and while that was happening, e-cigarette use was rising dramatically."

As you can see above, even if the CDC may try to argue that tobacco use remains overall the same if you fraudulently include e-cigs in the same category, it is completely untrue to say that youth smoking has stopped falling.

It's the same if you look at National Youth Tobacco Survey data, as Chris Snowdon did last month ...

... and also if you look at US Monitoring The Future surveys.

Contrary to what Simple Simon told Australia yesterday, nowhere is there a hint that youth smoking rates have stopped falling in the US. Yet if you're an Australian citizen who is largely uneducated on the subject of e-cigs, yesterday you would have heard someone called Professor something-or-other declare a falsehood as fact on Australia's state broadcaster.

In many professions, this kind of behaviour would be punishable by suspension or even dismissal. But in the unregulated Wild West world of 'public health' - where you would think accurate information should be far more important than in any other sphere - Chappers will get away scot-free with deliberately lying.

Sadly, he is just one small part of a broken and corrupt profession in which lying is viewed as an acceptable tactic, and which is actively harming social cohesion and liberty the world over. 

If You Believe They're Just Guidelines, You're A Fool

It's a constant source of astonishment to me how a huge section of society seems so incredibly incompetent at learning the lessons of history.

Take yesterday's story about 'killer' toast and roast potatoes, for example. It is pretty clear to anyone with reading skills and an education which included comprehension tests that the risk of cancer from toast and pizza ranges from negligible to non-existent. However, whenever these hysterical scares are published, they are always accompanied on social media by comments from smug, bovine cretins who claim it's just advice and why should we be concerned.

Well, this might be a clue.

Pubs and restaurants could soon be fined for serving well-done items such as triple-cooked chips or thin and crispy pizza under a second phase of the Government's crackdown on burnt food.   

Following the launch of a major public awareness campaign yesterday to help people reduce "cancer-causing" acrylamide in food, the Telegraph can reveal that food safety watchdogs are planning to extend the warning to every food-serving business in Britain.  

Under a new European Union food hygiene directive, due to be adopted in the UK by the the end of 2017, pubs and restaurants will be told to take reasonable steps to reduce acrylamide in food or face enforcement measures.

Now it becomes clear, doesn't it? Yesterday's 'guidance' from the Food Standards Agency wasn't so much a "mind how you go" piece of sage advice for the domestic chef, but more a piece of scaremongering to soften us up for yet more authoritarian nanny state interference in our lives and choices, instigated by the EU and faithfully followed by cowardly British public sector toadies.

I expect some dullards will say that this only affects businesses, but I'm sure I don't need to remind readers here that the pubs and restaurants involved will pass on any fines, or insurance against fines, in their pricing or - just as bad - stop serving up food as their customers prefer it to be served. Successful hospitality businesses thrive by producing what the customer wants to consume, unless of course the state comes in and spanners it all up.

The result will be higher prices and/or food that isn't quite as tasty as you'd ideally like it to be. Whichever way you slice it, the public loses ... and all due to junk science promoted by regulators effectively transferring your loss into a financial benefit to their pockets.

It's far from the first time too. Just last year we had the same kind of ignorant bleating that Silly Sally's corrupt re-jigging of alcohol advice was just an exercise in issuing guidelines, you didn't have to follow them and it wouldn't affect you if you didn't. Yet barely a breath was drawn before those same 'guidelines' were being used to inflate the figures on hazardous drinking in order to demand advertising bans, sales restrictions, taxes and minimum alcohol pricing, it was just a tool; a means to a pre-determined end.

It's hardly a surprise. Scroll back to 1971 when the government came to a deal with the tobacco industry to include messages on cigarette packets and you were benignly advised "WARNING by H.M. Government, SMOKING CAN DAMAGE YOUR HEALTH". What's the problem, eh? You could just ignore it, it's only guidance. Similarly in the 1990s 'public health' was merely educating us that passive smoking could be a problem, no-one was going to obstruct your liberties, it was just a little bit of unobtrusive advice.

Look, if you are one of those who really believes that the insanely lucrative and parasitic global 'public health' Goliath only exists to gently guide you, you are mindfuckingly gullible and your opinion on these kind of issues is about as inspired as a knitted condom is to birth control. There has never been anything remotely altruistic about 'public health', history shows us that. Every move they have ever made has simply been to facilitate something else more draconian; more obscene. To take the "next logical step", and every time that step is taken our lives suffer by becoming more oppressive, expensive or mostly both.

If the laughable notion of deadly roast potatoes helps wake the public up to the repulsive curse of public health fanaticism, that would be great. But I reckon it'll be the same old rolling of eyes around water coolers, in pubs and in every bus queue up and down the country; they'll laugh at the stupidity and just ignorantly mutter about how they're just guidelines as the noose gets gently tightened yet again.

If only we had examples from history to show that 'guidelines' never stay that way, eh? Good grief. 

That's Your Problem, Not Ours

There has always been a suspicion that the real reason that the tobacco control industry tends to dislike vaping is simply because it looks, to the uneducated, like smoking.

They can never say that, of course, because it's akin to claiming that water should be treated as a controlled substance because it looks like vodka. As a result, we have seen some quite desperate contrived arguments as to why e-cigs should be distrusted, mostly centred around the sector of society that tobacco controllers most like to exploit; children.

However, this week saw an article published by the University of Chicago which is the closest yet to admitting that, yes, the fact that vaping looks like smoking really is the reason many want the devices banned.

Seeing vape pen use boosts desire to smoke among young adults

Although they look less like cigarettes than first-generation e-cigarettes, a new study found that the newer generation e-cigarette vape pens (also known as vaporizers) stimulate the urge to smoke as powerfully as watching someone smoke a “combustible” tobacco cigarette.

We'll leave aside the fact that they seem pretty ignorant of the subject matter if they describe an e-cig as a 'vape pen', although I suppose it's marginally better than their usual preferred clinical renaming of e-cigs as "ENDS" (Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems).

“The new e-cigarettes, known as vape pens, are now larger and more powerful devices,” said study director Andrea King, PhD, professor of psychiatry and behavioral neuroscience and director of the clinical addictions research laboratory at the University of Chicago. “They have low resemblance to cigarettes, so some people were hoping they might not produce the same urge to smoke.” 

“But we found that they do stimulate the urge,” she said. “Vape pens look different but they share too many salient features of the act of smoking – including inhalation, exhalation and hand-to-mouth behaviors. This makes them a potent trigger, encouraging people to smoke. Their impact is roughly equal to watching someone light up a cigarette. They made the young adults in our study want to smoke.”

And? Who cares, quite frankly.

“We’ve made real progress on reducing smoking in our country,” King said. “We’ve done a good job banning indoor smoking. We rarely see two-pack-a-day smokers like we used to. Yet seeing people smoke in public remains common. Our study focused on a classical Pavlovian trigger, as seeing someone smoke is a known potent cue that can induce others to smoke. We did not expect that the vape pen would be as potent a cue as the regular cigarette, but it was as potent.”

Well, it was "potent" because the researchers placed cigarettes in front of their subjects - all smokers - while they were watching others vape; what other result did they expect? But, that aside, it seems clear that the point of this research was merely to sling a little more mud around about e-cigs, and to hint at how it might be viewed by legislators.

“The regulations in the U.S. on when and where somebody can use an e-cigarette are not yet standard,” she added.

Not standard, no. Vaping is banned by lazy and ignorant businesses and authorities worldwide but - to the horror of many tobacco controllers - it is still perfectly permissible in many public places!

“But we do know that, so far, the use of e-cigarettes has not had a major direct impact on smoking cessation efforts above and beyond public health messages and taxes.

Yes. Millions of smokers have quit using an e-cig but tobacco control still pretends it didn't happen. Instead, only tobacco control initiatives work ... because their colleagues - who would also lose funding if they were shown to be irrelevant - have done, erm, 'impartial' studies to 'prove' it.

The sight of someone using a vape pen bumps up the urge to smoke, so this may play a role in dual use of cigarettes and e-cigarettes, but future studies are needed.”

Nudge, nudge, wink wink eh politicians (and funders)?

Andrea King stopped short of demanding vaping be banned in public places alongside smoking, but it's safe to say that's what the dried-up witch was hinting at, it wasn't well hidden.

Of course, this is just a standard tobacco control industry exercise in junk science. We don't actually need to test King's theory in focus groups because we have compelling evidence already. In something called "real life".

So if King's bullshit was true, we'd have seen a marked decrease in quit attempts since e-cigs emerged, now wouldn't we? In England, at least, that certainly hasn't been the case (pdf).

I'd say it's not the case in the US either considering the country is experiencing record low levels of smoking prevalence across the board. So it's safe to dismiss this 'study' as a pitiful fairy tale spun by warped prohibitionists; about as useful to 'public health' as picking fly shit out of pepper.

Not surprising, then, that the only news outlet willing to publish on King's bullshit propaganda was the Mail and - seeing as the 'public health' community as a movement routinely condemns the Mail as bog roll - that fact should, ironically, tell them what an embarrassment King and her colleagues are to their University, and to science in general.

Still, it's all moot anyway. Let's assume for the purposes of debate that King's conclusions are 100% correct, and that smokers reach for their tabs the moment someone vapes. So what? There is still no reason to ban vaping in public places. In countries like the US and UK, we have conventions that say we don't ban our people from doing things as long as they don't harm others. E-cigs are legal products and there is no evidence whatsoever (nor will there ever be) that they have the potential to cause illness in others; while cigarettes are legal products too, and it is up to the smoker whether they smoke or not.

Anyone who proposes a ban which goes against these rules of liberty - a concept which is 150 years old - is simply a fascist, as I've said many times before. If smokers are tempted to light up when they see someone vaping, (the same could be said about no smoking signs and graphic health warnings that tobacco control favours) so what? That's your problem sunshine, not ours. Go for a stroll on the freeway and leave us alone. 

Pokébollocks

The tobacco control industry, in its relentless pursuit of factual impurity, has just released a junk study which accuses vape shops of using the Pokemon Go game to attract kids to using e-cigs. Yes, as with everything they do it's quite obviously bullshit and designed to panic the gullible by way of screaming "children" as much as possible. 

Now, I don't know a lot about the game myself but a fellow jewel robber does. Here is a guest post from Pokemon Go-playing Neil Robinson to explain how their alarmism is not only utter nonsense, but also shows that they understand even less about the app than I do ... and that's really saying something! 

Over to Neil.

July of 2016 saw a social revolution unlike anything that has been seen previously. Large swathes of the population were spontaneously getting off their sofa’s and engaging in exercise, many walking several miles each day. Disparate groups were forming in public places exchanging happy and excited conversation; a real sense of burgeoning community was to be felt in the air.

Were these Remain protesters? Was this the start of the inevitable overthrow of the patriarchy? Were the masses seizing the means of production?

No, we were all playing Pokémon Go.

And I do mean all. In its first month after launch, it was getting 45 million daily players whilst still being rolled out worldwide. By August 1st, it had reached 100 million downloads, and was earning $10 million a day through in-app purchases.

So why the hell is this on Dick Puddlecote's blog you ask? Because even tobacco controllers can't miss that sort of hype. Cue the inevitable “study”.

“Electronic cigarette retailers use Pokémon Go to market products” extol the authors with breathless excitement. Unfortunately, the rest of the pitch is garbled nonsense, Joe Camel and unfounded accusations.

The gist of the paper is that those evil peddlers of death, vape companies, are latching on to this childrens' game to market their 'deadly' wares to kids in an attempt to hook the next generation, despite the fact that their own source of demographics (a Forbes article!) shows that a full 78% of players are over the age of 18.

An important element of gameplay in Pokémon Go are things called Pokéstops, where gamers can visit the physical location chosen by the games creators, Niantec, collect free in-game goodies such as extra pokéballs for catching more Pokémon, health potions etc. You also stand a much better chance of catching a Pokémon near each pokéstop, so its common to find players hanging around near them waiting for yet another Pidgey, Rattata or Weedle (gotta catch ‘em all!).

Each pokéstop is chosen because the location has an element of significance about it, be it a church, a monument or statue, or even if its a pub, they’re all commonly chosen by Niantec to act as pokéstops. To activate these pokéstops and get your free goodies, you must be within range of it, which is a circle of approximately 100m. This means that should a pokéstop happen to be on a pub, a vape shop, or as in my local area on the Masonic Temple, you don't have to go inside to catch the wee beastie.

If you own a vape shop, you can't just decide that it’s going become a pokéstop – it’s not going to happen (there was a period of 10 days back in July when Niantec did accept suggestions, but they were quickly swamped and withdrew it). So its not like evil vape shop owners are deliberately placing “child friendly” pokéstops in their shops, Niantec has always and will always be the final arbiter of where they appear. If there's one near a vape shop, its entirely down to luck.

The average player is a white, female 25 year old earning over $90,000 a year, yet these happy clowns try every trick in the book to make it sound apocalyptic:

This game-based promotional strategy could increase tobacco marketing exposure among adolescents and young adult non-users, increasing their risk for future initiation.  Further research is warranted to determine whether non-tobacco users visit vape shops and/or initiate e-cigarette use after being exposed to these advertisements via game playing, and whether current e-cigarette users increase use as a result of game play. 

If I were a vape shop owner and hordes of rich 25 year old women started hanging around my shop, I think I’d try and get some inside, wouldn't you?

several vape shops and online retailers have incorporated Pokémon Go as part of promotions on Twitter, linking game performance with discounts on their products (eg, “…show us a rare Pokemon that we don’t have and get 10% off entire purchase!”; “Check out our Pokémon Go sale! Level 10=5%, Level 20=10% OFF STORE WIDE!!!!”; “Come to our store, we just dropped a lure out…”).  

Vape shops have also staged in-person events combining Pokémon Go play and interactive e-cigarette promotional contests. Figure 3 (left panel) shows an advertisement for an event at a vape shop in the Los Angeles area featuring “Lures, Pizza, DJ, Giveaways, and Prizes all night long at the Cloudscape Mural PokeStop”.  

Additionally, Planet Vape sponsored an event (“Pokemon Go Planet Vape Meetup!”) announcing that their store was a PokéStop (“We are lucky to have a Pokéstop just outside the front door!”) and offering prizes for best Pokémon caught in their shop. 

The clear assumption here is that the vape shops in question will happily sell to anybody who walks through their door - which is of course nonsense - and is backed up by precisely zero evidence. What it really shows is that vape vendors are connected to their community in ways that Tobacco Controllers can only dream of (or possibly have nightmares about), and are using the popularity of a game that a large proportion of their customer base are already using to try and increase their market share and make a few bucks. To anyone not intent on overthrowing capitalism, this would seem like a good business move, and indeed it was widely publicised as such at the time.

They also throw in a snapshot taken from Joyetech’s Instagram as proof of e-cigs being marketed to kids, once again failing to realise that the image would only have ever been seen by those who already subscribe to Joyetech’s content. The internet is not a broadcast medium, but they just can't seem to get that through their pointy little heads!

Realising the weakness of their argument, our stalwart heroes of the common good decided to throw in some scary looking pictures to help make their point.

Anyone who has ever seen the game played will recognise this as a Pokémon being captured, which can occur randomly at any location. The background image comes from the camera of the phone being used, in a sort of augmented reality way; meaning that the authors have deliberately pointed their camera directly at the store front of a vape shop in order to make it look as scary as possible. They could equally well have used either of the following two pics to illustrate their point, but chose to manufacture that one.

But then I guess they’re not too well known for their sense of humour.

In a final desperate attempt to justify the waste of electrons, the “researchers” turned to Yelp (not welp). They found 19 vape shops in their area which could potentially be in reach of a pokéstop. For some reason, they decided to only visit 8 of these 19. Perhaps the others were in areas they promised their Mom they wouldnt go to. Of the 8 locations they could bring themselves to visit, 6 actually were lucky enough to be within range of where Niantec decided to put the pokéstop, and of those 6 only 1 was using it to their advantage.

One shop. With one A3 poster outside it.  Oh wait, there's more…

while another promoted their products using other cartoon images. 

which I can only imagine was a roaring political lambast from Gerald Scarfe. Given that they neither provide a photo nor description, I have as much chance of being right as anyone.

You can imagine my horror at these blatant underhanded industry tactics. *yawn*

This however did not deter our insipid intrepid investigators, who went on with the usual demands for more research (money), and the usual policy “recommendations”.

Policies specifically prohibiting the use of Pokémon Go and other cartoons/video games to promote e-cigarettes and related products should be considered, as this would be consistent with both current US legal agreements by major tobacco companies to avoid the use of cartoons in their advertisements (ie, the Master Settlement Agreement) 

Despite the fact that vaping is not smoking, contains no tobacco and is not covered under the MSA agreement. And all for a game where 78% of the players are over the age of 18.

Spot the kid at a Pokemon convention

No Evidence 'Public Health' Aids Public Health

Following swiftly on from the tobacco controllers who believe lying about the benefits of reduced risk products is a fine and ethical idea, comes this remarkable article in the Guardian.

Brace yourselves, because this one is through the looking glass with Alice and the fucking Mad Hatter!

No evidence sugar-free soft drinks aid weight loss – study 

Soft drinks made with artificial sweeteners, such as diet colas, do not help people lose weight and may be as big a part of the obesity problem as the full-sugar versions, academics have said.

That's right, drinks which contain no sugar and no calories are just as bad as ones which do, apparently. So, I presume we can now forget all that ridiculous panicking about sugar, can't we? I mean, they've been telling us the stuff is death personified for the past year or two, but if a drink with no sugar in it at all is on a par then surely there's absolutely bugger all to worry about, no?

You could pitch the conclusion in a slightly different way and say "full sugar drinks are about as harmless as those with no sugar and no calories". Great, why didn't they just say so before. Hey Public Health England, you can shut the fuck up about fizzy drinks now and instead go and do something useful with the monumental amount of our cash you waste.

Of course that's not going to happen, is it? There's still a lot to be milked out of this particular fake health lobbying cash cow.

A paper by researchers at Imperial College London and two universities in Brazil contends that artificially sweetened beverages, often called diet drinks, are just as big a problem as those containing sugar. There is no evidence they help people lose weight, they say, possibly because people assume they can eat more because their drinks are low in sugar.

Oh right, so you mean that it is nothing to do with the drink, it's that people eat more and, erm, eating a lot makes you fat ... as we have kind of known since Neanderthal man overindulged on Sabre-toothed Tiger steaks.

Of course, if there is no difference between sugary and non-sugary drinks in respect to obesity, we can all ignore these chumps about sugar and they can toddle off and talk about over-eating, huh?

Many manufacturers are looking to boost sales of drinks containing artificial sweeteners in order to escape the levy. Such products already account for 25% of the global soft drinks market. 

Prof Christopher Millett, senior investigator at Imperial’s School of Public Health, said: “A common perception, which may be influenced by industry marketing, is that because ‘diet’ drinks have no sugar they must be healthier and aid weight loss when used as a substitute for full-sugar versions. However, we found no solid evidence to support this.”

In which case, there is absolutely no point in the government trying to get manufacturers to reduce the sugar content in their drinks because - as we have been saying on these pages for quite a while - it will have no effect on the nation's weight whatsoever. The best argument yet for scrapping the utterly laughable and pointless sugar tax, eh? Thanks for your help guys, much appreciated.

The paper, published in the journal PLoS Medicine, is a commentary on the research done so far into artificially sweetened beverages promoted as healthier alternatives and the impact on weight.

Erm, "commentary", did you say? So this is opinion and not a "study" or, in fact, any kind of science at all? Well no, because they skip pretty early into the ad homs.

Maria Carolina Borges, the first author of the study, from the Federal University of Pelotas, in Brazil, said: “The lack of solid evidence on the health effects of ASBs [artificially sweetened beverages] and the potential influence of bias from industry-funded studies should be taken seriously when discussing whether ASBs are adequate alternatives to SSBs [sugar-sweetened beverages].”

"Potential bias"? They don't actually bother to try to do science themselves - God forbid! - to disprove the conclusions of these studies, but merely drag their knuckles along the ground, point an accusatory finger and grunt "Ugg! Industry-funded!", which is an instant fail in my opinion.

It gets worse ...

Prof Carlos Monteiro, a co-author, from the University of São Paulo, said: “Taxes and regulation on SSBs and not ASBs will ultimately promote the consumption of diet drinks rather than plain water, the desirable source of hydration for everyone.”

Desirable to whom, sunshine? Who made you the arbiter of what I, and everyone else on the planet, wishes to fucking drink? Why don't you just Samba off into the River Amazon you odious dictatorial motherfucker you.

As one commenter under the line pointed out, this is 'public health' not just aping satire, no it's even more hilarious than that.

"Possibly because people assume they can eat more because their drinks are low in sugar" is potentially one of the stupidest things I have ever heard and reminds me of Little Britain's half the calories diet, where you cut your food in half and it's half the calories. And because it's half the calories, you can have twice as much. 

We're not talking side-achingly funny farce here, this is an actual policy position from people who claim to work in the 'scientific' 'public health' arena. It truly beggars belief!

Of course, we jewel robbers know exactly what is going on here because we've seen it all before. 'Public health' science is never interested in truth, instead it merely endeavours to support whatever policy position the lying bastards are pursuing at any particular time. In the case of sugar taxes, those opposed have pointed out - quite rightly - that the 'problem' is solving itself as the public move onto lower sugar products or ones with no sugar at all, and industry reacts by providing products to satisfy the demand. As a result, low and no sugar alternatives have to be demonised no matter how ridiculous it makes 'public health' fucktards look.

This is not a serious study, piece of research, or even a wise opinion based on sound science. It is merely an attempt to counter a very compelling reason why we should not be subjected to daft taxation policies that the 'public health' bandwagon requires to survive just as much as a great white shark needs to keep moving to breathe.

These people are so incredibly cretinous that I don't think they even considered that the message they could be sending is the opposite of what they hoped for; their one-eyed insanity is so deeply-entrenched that they delivered a message saying full sugar drinks are as 'safe' as Coke Zero almost on auto-pilot.

The real target - as is always the case - is industry and free choice. These snobby fucks don't like that people are enjoying drinks that they personally don't - "plain water, the desirable source of hydration" is a pretty blatant clue - made by companies that they ideologically despise.

It's all drawn from the same dishonest and corrupt playbook that tobacco control created when they declared snus, chewing tobacco and now e-cigs to be as dangerous as chain-smoking, and is designed only to demonise industry and deny our free choice of these products as a concept.

However, there's always an upside. We need a tipping point to make politicians ignore the massed ranks of lying 'public health' parasites, and the more they rip into hugely popular products like Coke and tell us that eating cakes in an office is a 'public health' disaster, the quicker the public will wake up and realise they're a bunch of pompous, fraudulent, right-on, money-grubbing, industry-envious arseholes who will happily destroy civil society if it earns them a buck.

Oh yes, and stratospherically-incompetent with it. 

There's A New Idiot In Town

Twat

It may be Christmas Eve where the vast majority of the country has closed down for the holidays, but it seems there is still time for one last piece of cretinous, puritanical, ivory tower codswallop from the 'public health' community.

Via The Times:

Vaping should be banned in public places, Britain’s top family doctor says, signalling a backlash against the enthusiastic welcome of e-cigarettes by the medical establishment. 

Helen Stokes-Lampard, chairwoman of the Royal College of GPs, hit out at e-cigarettes as a “lifestyle choice”, insisting they must be confined to medically supervised attempts to quit smoking.

It seems that, despite the events of 2016, these elitist morons still don't get it.

Stokes-Lampard has only been in her job for just over a month, but is already proving that GPs would probably be far better led by Frank Lampard instead. Her view of e-cigs is so out there where the buses don't run that you have to think seriously about the safety of going to your NHS doctor in the future if this is the kind of profoundly ignorant guidance they can expect to be shovelled.

“The only place that I see vaping has is for people cutting down from smoking on their way to quitting, and therefore the appropriate thing is to treat it like smoking,” Dr Stokes-Lampard said in an interview.

This attitude beggars belief and is so far removed from the consensus of current UK medical opinions about e-cigs that we must either assume she is fishing for headlines to stamp her name on the public's consciousness, or question outright the underlying motive for her uttering such execrable bullshit.

“I think it would be a retrograde step to allow vaping in public places,” she said. Many pubs and restaurants have opted to ban vaping on their premises, as have trains and airports.

Retrograde step? The reason that e-cigs are allowed in public places is that we are not (yet) living in a fascist dictatorship - however much 'public health' attempts to make it so - and there is not, and never will be, proven harm to bystanders from passive vaping. Of course, there is nothing but junk science and innuendo to back up the hysteria over passive smoking either, but since Stokes-Lampard appears to be a fully signed-up member of the cult of tobacco control industry woo, she's too gullible to even reach the first level of understanding of the matter.

This, remember, is the person who has just been put in charge of the organisation that oversees every GP in the United Kingdom. Just pause and think on that for a moment. Truly terrifying, isn't it?

As the NNA described just yesterday, Stokes-Lampard is in the camp of those who know the princely sum of fuck all about what she is pronouncing on.

As the NNA has consistently advocated, a vast number of people derive great pleasure from nicotine just as millions enjoy coffee containing caffeine – both judged to be on the same toxicity level by experts – yet we do not hear of government campaigns to wean the public, or even MPs themselves, off coffee. Smokers are not ill and do not require a medical intervention; in fact, for many the very idea is anathema and would deter them from switching to a less harmful alternative.  

The huge and swift success of vaping in the UK has occurred not because it is viewed exclusively as a smoking cessation device – quite the opposite – instead the success is attributable to vaping being an enjoyable, healthier pastime free from the pressure of real or imagined state coercion. If full nicotine cessation then ensues then so be it, however that should not be the sole consideration. 

This is entirely correct. Smokers don't want to be hectored on high by self-righteous totalitarians like Stokes-Lampard, which is why they are voting with their feet and deserting Stop Smoking Services in their droves in favour of their local vape shop; the result has been a significant decline in smoking prevalence. All that a ban on vaping in public places can possibly do is to slow that down or even slam the bloody phenomenon into reverse gear, yet this ridiculous person - charged with being a thoughtful and wise leader of doctors nationwide, incredibly - doesn't even possess the basic mental capacity to understand even that.

Listen, Helen, we realise it must hurt that smokers are doing things for themselves and don't really need GP lectures any more, but wouldn't it be better if you just shut your vacuous trap instead of jealously endorsing policies which would have the sole effect of deterring people from quitting smoking? Christ on a bike, I thought we'd left this kind of protectionist medical industry ignorance behind when quacks finally conceded that a course of leeches wasn't all it was cracked up to be!

“At the Royal College of GPs we don’t allow people to vape in the building. Until we have the full evidence base we are taking the conservative approach that we do not allow smoking, we do not allow vaping because it’s so closely aligned,” she said.

Yes that's right, Helen, they're one and the same thing. My life, how fucking stupid do you have to be to believe that when all the science says otherwise? Now, I could expect it out of some knuckle-dragging ignoramus down the pub, but this woman is billed as "Britain’s top family doctor"! How bad were the other candidates if this weapons grade bonehead got the job?

Jacob Rees-Mogg MP recently said that "experts, soothsayers and astrologists are all in much the same category", and was lambasted for it by the class of arrogant, over-thinking establishment imbeciles which comprise people such as Helen Stokes-Lampard. Her ignorant wibble on the subject of smokers and vaping has just proved him 100% correct.

Did I ever tell you, by the way, that it's never been about health? 

The Children, You Say?

I'm sure you'll all remember how plain packaging was sold to governments as a way of stopping children from taking up smoking, right?

Well, that quickly morphed into deterring adults once the liars in the tobacco control industry had gotten their way, but they did always say that there was no threat to freedom of choice. In fact, it was often stated categorically that they had no intention whatsoever of interfering with the choices that smokers make!

Like everything else anti-smokers say, though, that was untrue as well. Consider this from News.com.au:

Mystery shoppers hired by Imperial Tobacco are sent to retailers with a very specific script. 

“I normally smoke Winfield 30s but I am looking for an alternative, what would you recommend instead of Winfield 30s?” the shoppers are instructed to ask, in a job summary seen by news.com.au. 

When asked how much they want to spend, the mystery shopper says “maybe something a little cheaper”. 

If asked about their preferred cigarette’s strength, the shopper replies: “I usually smoke the blue ones.” 

Then it’s over to the staff member who says the magic words and steers the “customer” towards John Player Special, a brand imported by Imperial. If the staff member does not mention any other brand, they score points towards the company’s incentive program. 

At this point, the mystery shopper identifies him or herself and informs the staff member that the results will be tallied at head office and prizes awarded to those with the top scores.

Note that this is a 'shopper' - an adult one at that - entering a shop with the express purpose of buying cigarettes. A current smoker, too, since there's a clue there when they say "I normally smoke Winfield 30s".

So what's the problem?

[Scott Walsberger, the head of tobacco control and prevention at Cancer Council NSW, said] “Every time we’ve brought in legislation, you see the tobacco industry push the envelope, continually trying to make their product attractive and market them as much as possible,” he said. 

“They’re always focused on selling more cigarettes, more people getting addicted and they go to all lengths to do that — so it’s not surprising that, as we tighten up regulations of how they market their products in some ways, that they’ve sought out the channels where they’re not regulated and exploit them to continue to promote their product.”

So, Scott, quick maths quiz for you. How many more cigarettes would be sold if a person who usually buys 30 cigarettes of one brand is guided into buying 30 cigarettes of another brand? Additionally, if one smoker enters a shop to buy cigarettes and the same one smoker exits the shop with a packet of cigarettes, how many more people have been "addicted"? You can use a calculator if it helps.

He called for new laws to better regulate how tobacco products are sold and marketed and made available through retail outlets, and rejected the argument that trade marketing only targeted customers who were already smokers. 

“They say they’re not marketing to new customers, just getting people to switch brands or building brand loyalty; we know that’s not true,” Mr Walsberger said.

Erm, Scott, all marketing is about brand share unless you're a vested interest knuckle-shuffler who fundamentally fails (deliberately) to understand the advertising industry.

Look, for argument's sake, let's pretend - as you do - that shiny packets are so alluring that they turn innocent and health-conscious people into automatons who simply must buy a packet of fags. Well, you haven't got those anymore in Australia so problem solved.

This case, however, is of a shopper who clearly states their intention to buy a pack of 30 cigarettes anyway and will walk out with a packet of 30 cigarettes, just maybe a different brand. How is the marketing not about brands; how is it "untrue". How is this marketing to new customers if the consumer has already decided to buy cigarettes?

Oh, I see, it's just another tobacco control industry lie, isn't it? You just can't fucking help yourselves.

As usual these days, it is left up to the tobacco industry to inject some honesty and integrity into the debate.

A spokesman for Imperial Tobacco Australia said the company sold a legal product and defended its trade marketing practices. 

“The program in question sees shoppers specifically identifying themselves as adult consumers of tobacco products who are seeking a brand recommendation from a retailer. 

“This clearly neither ‘circumvents legislation’ nor has any bearing on the choice of an adult to consume tobacco. It simply addresses which brand that adult consumer might choose.”

We're a long way from "protecting children from glitzy packets" here, aren't we?

The simple and unavoidable truth now is that the tobacco control charade is just one long and never-ending catalogue of lies. They lie when they wake up, they spend their day lying, and then they lie some more. Once they think they've done all the lying they are capable of for the day, they squeeze out a few more lies just for good measure. Then they go to sleep and dream about what lies they can tell the next day.

Here we see them not protecting children because no children are involved. They are also not protecting adults from starting to smoke because the buyer is already a smoker and intends to buy cigarettes. They are also not protecting people who want to quit smoking because the consumer has every intention of buying cigarettes. They are not encouraged to buy more, simply the same amount but of a different brand.

So, as we all know, this proves pretty convincingly that the tobacco control monstrosity - and their daft and pointless plain packaging makework exercise - is not, and never has been, about protecting kids, nor even about protecting adults. The only possible explanation for this fake fury is that they simply despise industry and hate the idea that smokers might be allowed to benefit from useful advice since there is none available due to the bans 'public health' has brought in.

It is mendacious bullying, nothing more, nothing less. They are the criminally-dishonest, we are the angelic truth-tellers.

It also shows that to be a tobacco controller you must act every day as if you are wearing shit-stained glasses and complain that everything stinks. Every one of them should be stuck on a spike somewhere very public pour encourager les autres. How the entirely disingenuous 'public health' racket still has the ear of governments is anyone's guess, perhaps one day - after a few more electoral surprises - politicians may work out that we've had enough of their shit. 

How Dare Members Of The Public Respond To A Public Consultation!

Regular readers here will know that I often describe the tobacco control industry as 'extremists', and there is a good reason for that. You see, their methods are remarkably similar to those of totalitarian dictatorships.

Their policies consist entirely of lies, intimidation and suppression of debate and - rather like ISIS - they demand that what they say goes and for any dissent or opposing view to be silenced and/or ignored.

So this document which has just come to light won't come as much of a surprise. I've embedded it at the bottom of the page, and you can see that it is a letter from Florence Berteletti-Kemp demanding that EU President Jose Manuel Barroso ignore tens of thousands of responses from members of the public to the public consultation on the Tobacco Products Directive. Incredibly, one of the justifications she gives is that there are too many objections, because such consultations only usually attract about 20 responses, and she complains that there are organisations encouraging people to make their voice heard! I mean, how disgraceful is it that people should be urged to engage with the democratic process (such as it is in the EU), eh?

The pre-consultation report is here and, as you can see, included sections not only on conventional tobacco, but also snus and e-cigs. Considering the huge number of people across the EU who use such products, it should have been welcomed that so many wished to express their thoughts on early proposals, however briefly. I wrote about the consultation at the time in order to drive responses their way, as did former influential blogger and now LBC radio presenter Iain Dale and many others. But tobacco control has never been in the business of debating and will always try to silence any opposition to their insane self-enriching policy-chasing, so there's no way they want to hear from the ghastly public.

There is evidence that these vile anti-democratic and transparency-phobic creeps - including Debs Arnott in the days when she was still honest about her intention to medicalise all e-cigs, along with Anna 'Rent-a-junk-study' Gilmore, CRUK head Jean King, Monika Kosinska, Luk Joossens, Luke Clancy and other well-known fanatical prohibitionists -  got their way too, as we can see from this article in 2011.

The EU Commission, however, dismisses a significant portion of the responses from the 82,000 citizens on the grounds that two-thirds are from Italy and Poland, where tobacco merchants organised petitions.

This isn't an unusual tactic either. We saw the same with the tobacco display ban in the UK in 2008.

Ken Patel, Leicester retailer and National Spokesman for the Tobacco Retailers Alliance, said: "First the Minister refused to meet with retailers, now they have censored our formal response to a public consultation." 

Campaign Manager Katherine Graham said; "We are not listed as one of the respondents although our response was submitted by email and also sent by post, so we can be certain it was received. For some reason the views of 25,000 shopkeepers just seem to have been air-brushed out of the consultation report."

And it was also attempted during the plain packs campaign in 2013, again sneakily involving letters to politicians to demand the public is ignored.

It piqued my interest as I was rather intrigued as to what had been discussed at this meeting, so I submitted a freedom of information request. The response was a brief note which you can read in Scribd here, but this is the part which I found most interesting.

"On plain packaging, the APPG expressed concerns that results of any consultation could be skewed if consumer/retail groups were used to inflate responses. They also wanted to know when decisions were likely to be made."

Now, I don't know about you, but that does seem to suggest that the delegation of MPs Stephen Williams, Kevin Barron and Bob Blackman (not Paul as in the document) - along with Deborah Arnott their ASH secretary - were urging Anne Milton to ignore responses from groups such as Hands Off Our Packs, the National Federation of Retail Newsagents, The Association of Convenience Stores etc. In fact, any organised group who are opposed to plain packaging. 

Note that they were not concerned about organised groups of any stripe collecting signatures which, of course, would have ruled out CRUK responses as well as SmokeFree South West's government-funded campaign. No, they were only addressing campaigns organised in opposition. 

Of course, there were no questions whatsoever about the signatures raised in support of the policy by state-funded fake charities, Cancer Research UK, and even the plain packs campaign itself, even though they were gathered using exactly the same methods. The stark hypocrisy of these odious creatures is stunning. 

All of which goes to prove that tobacco controllers are not just enemies of tolerance and freedom of choice, but also of the right of the public to have their views counted and, therefore, an enemy of the democratic process itself.

You can read their grubby letters demanding public responses be ignored at this Scribd link or scroll through it below. 

Tobacco Control Complains About Public Responses to a Public Consultation on Scribd

#COP7FCTC: The Pre-Beano Manual

With the FCTC's anti-smoker, anti-free speech, anti-decency, anti-democratic, truth-free, ethics-free, integrity-free and thoroughly nasty dictatorship-fawning COP7 beano for hideous prohibitionists beginning on Monday, here's a handy guide from the US-based Taxpayers Protection Alliance as to what to expect in the next week.

I've screened some highlights.

I think they understand the WHO's FCTC very well, don't you?

Crazy Like A #COP7FCTC

As the biennial comedy-fest known as the FCTC's Conference of the Parties approaches (COP7 begins in New Delhi on Monday the 7th), you might like to stick this little nugget in the file marked "you couldn't make this shit up".

You may remember Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva. She is head of the secretariat of the FCTC and the woman who recently praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, a man responsible for thousands of extra-judicial murders in his country since May and who has said he would "happily slaughter 3 million drug addicts". In fact, he even has a wish list of those he wants killed and has boasted that we should expect tens of thousands more.

Congrats Philippines @FCTCofficial @ImPresDuterte Smoke-free Philippines awaits Duterte signature https://t.co/z8zytFsrIy via @sharethis

— Vera daCosta e Silva (@vera_dacosta) October 10, 2016

So who better, then, to talk about her commitment to ... erm ... human rights, eh?

Human rights experts hear from the Head of the Convention Secretariat

Human rights experts meeting at the Palais des Nations in Geneva heard how the global tobacco control treaty is increasingly relevant to advances in public health and human rights.  

The United Nations Human Rights Council’s Second Session of the Open-ended Intergovernmental Working Group (OEIGWG) on transnational corporations (TNCs) and other business enterprises with respect to human rights heard from Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva, Head of the Convention Secretariat, to the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC).

Yes, you really did just read that.

It gets more bizarre the further down you read.

The basis of the WHO FCTC is to assert the individual’s right to protection from powerful organizations which, left unchallenged, will knowingly cause harm.

The FCTC is a powerful organisation which will be doing its level best next week to encourage bans on e-cigs and vaping despite being quite aware of their harm reduction potential (for background on the FCTC's appalling pre-COP7 report on vaping products and a devastating critique of it, do go read here).

You could arguably say that could "knowingly cause harm", yes?

The importance of human rights is foundational to the WHO FCTC.

Apart from if you're talking about the murder of thousands of drug users in the Philippines without trial and without even an attempt at establishing credible evidence of guilt, in which case Vera and the FCTC are very happy to turn a blind eye.

Parties to the WHO FCTC acknowledge the individual’s right to the highest attainable standard of health ...

Presumably, "the highest attainable standard of health" involves actually being alive instead of being gunned down in the street by death squads paid by governments such as, oh let me think, the one run by FCTC darling Rodrigo Duterte.

Dr Vera Luiza da Costa e Silva suggested the intergovernmental working group to consider cleansing the public policy arena of corporations whose actions or products threaten human rights.

But deranged blood-thirsty dictators are quite welcome to join the party and will be fully encouraged.

Two years ago COP6 delivered some top drawer moon-howling craziness, but strap yourselves in because already COP7 is promising to excel even the FCTC's own high standards of insanity.

We're Staying Alive, You .... Maybe Not So Much

A quick update on Monday's article.

Y'see, Dr Vera da Costa e Silva - head of the secretariat of the World Health Organisation’s FCTC - posted this incredible tweet congratulating the Philippines and their genocidal President Ricardo Duterte who has encouraged the murder of thousands of people and boasted that he wants to "slaughter" 3 million.

Congrats Philippines @FCTCofficial @ImPresDuterte Smoke-free Philippines awaits Duterte signature https://t.co/z8zytFsrIy via @sharethis

— Vera daCosta e Silva (@vera_dacosta) October 10, 2016

The very next day, the World Health Organisation's Western Pacific arm - the area which includes the Philippines - were dancing to ... Staying Alive!

Think meetings are boring?Not at @WHOWPRO 67th regional mtg. Here’s what took place after lunch Monday #sittingnewsmoking @devex @WHO pic.twitter.com/7mftfGrzIS

— Jenny Lei Ravelo (@JennyLeiRavelo) October 11, 2016

Seriously, try to make something up as bizarre as that, I dare you.

Now, I thought the WHO was a pretty deranged and politically moronic organisation in 2014 when it decided not to cancel COP6 in Moscow after Russia had just shot down a passenger plane carrying 298 innocent individuals, amongst whom were "dozens" of medical professionals on their way to an International Aids conference, and which included one of their own World Health Organisation media officers.

In fact, not only did they not cancel it, the Director General Margaret Chan then held a photo opp and supped from the same samovar as Russia's leader to thank him for his, erm, trouble.

But dancing to Staying Alive the day after one of their senior spokespeople has praised a political leader who is happy that, daily, bodies of healthy people increasingly litter the streets of a country within their jurisdiction is truly jaw-dropping.

They may as well walk up to the grief-stricken families of the Philippines dead and slap them in the face. These rancid tax-draining animals have absolutely no shame whatsoever, do they?

Prior to #COP7FCTC, The WHO Plumbs New Depths

Not content with telling Syrians that the most important thing to worry about right now - over and above being one of the hundreds of thousands killed by barrel bombs or brutally executed by ISIS - is how to best quit smoking, the WHO's FCTC have found a way to disgust us even more.

Congrats Philippines @FCTCofficial @ImPresDuterte Smoke-free Philippines awaits Duterte signature https://t.co/z8zytFsrIy via @sharethis

— Vera daCosta e Silva (@vera_dacosta) October 10, 2016

The excitement Dr Vera da Costa e Silva - head of the secretariat of the WHO’s FCTC - is enjoying at this great news almost leaps off the page, doesn't it? He's such a nice man, that Duterte, he's one of the FCTC in-crowd and no mistake.

If you're not familiar with President Duterte, here's a quick primer. He is the President of The Philipines and has told his people that it is perfectly acceptable to just, you know, pop out onto the street and kill drug users. No evidence needed, no arrest, no trial, no courts; just see someone you don't like, slaughter them in cold blood, wrap their head in gaffer tape and say he was a druggie. The authorities won't bother you, in fact you'll be celebrated or even salaried.

He has said that he would happily "slaughter" 3 million drug addicts and is proud to compare himself to Hitler ... and da Costa is likewise very proud to be associated with him too, as her tweet shows.

The Inquirer has set up a regularly updated 'kill list' in an attempt to document the misery and carnage this disgusting dictator has wrought on his country, it's an imprecise science but at time of writing his policy has resulted in over 2,500 extra-judicial killings, with corpses just left on the street. Yet da Costa thinks he's just a regular decent guy.

Now, I've written before about how the FCTC does very much love a dictatorship so, including countries like Zimbabwe and Turkmenistan which boast shameful human rights records; today Guido published a picture of FCTC delegates all smiles on a Maldives beach treating delegates from North Korea and Burma amongst others; and the last major conference (COP6) of this group of extremist ghouls was held in Moscow, where Margaret Chan - Director General of the WHO - chose to simper over Putin just after Russia had blown a packed passenger plane out of the sky killing 298 innocent people instead of being at a summit to discuss tackling the scourge of Ebola in Africa.

DG of the WHO Margaret Chan, all of a flutter in Moscow 2014

As an offshoot of the United Nations, you'd think da Costa, Chan and all the other repellent hangers-on to this anti-smoking cult might be a bit embarrassed about being in cahoots with some of the most brutal and murderous people on the planet. After all, the UN carries a commitment to the protection of human rights and and aspiration to improving living conditions throughout the world in its principle goals.

To achieve international co-operation in solving international problems of an economic, social, cultural, or humanitarian character, and in promoting and encouraging respect for human rights and for fundamental freedoms for all without distinction as to race, sex, language, or religion; and religion; and to be a centre for harmonizing the actions of nations in the attainment of these common ends.

How fawning over leaders who shoot planes of holidaymakers out of the sky, and murder many thousands of their own citizens without trial while comparing themselves to Hitler fits in with that motto is anyone's guess.

Still, it's nearly time for COP7 where these vile human beings will be trotting down to New Delhi to shower praise on India for its efforts in jailing vapers for the hideous crime of quitting smoking ... something the FCTC is supposed to be in favour of.

After reading the above, you'd think the UK would have nothing to do with such a revolting, corrupt and morally-bankrupt collection of utter bastards, wouldn't you? Well you'd be wrong. The Department of Health's Andrew Black will be there glad-handing these repulsive people, as will Deborah Arnott of ASH. And you're paying them to do so.

Doesn't that turn your stomach? I really don't know how such foul and sickening people sleep at night.

UPDATE: Fergus has had his say on this too.

When an organisation that’s supposed to be promoting health becomes so corrupted by prohibitionist zealots that it’s willing to endorse a madman who massacres his own citizens in the streets, it is no longer fit to exist. The WHO’s senior staff need to be swept away and replaced by sane adults. And until people like the odious da Costa are gone, no civilised government or organisation should have anything to do with the FCTC. Tobacco control fanatics are now so extreme that they’re openly allying themselves with Hitlerian criminals like Kim and Duterte. It’s time for the world to stand up and stop the bastards.

Do go have a read.

More 'Public Health' Crocodile Tears Over Pubs

The cost of UK booze is the third highest in the EU behind Finland and Ireland, and we pay some of the most expensive prices in the world ... so today's tiresome 'public health' whine is about how alcohol is, nevertheless, far too cheap. Natch.

Alcohol continues to be sold at 'pocket money prices', report finds

It's about time they came out with a different sound bite because 'pocket money prices' is becoming boring. No-one who has shopped in a supermarket recognises it as true but it's exactly the same term they used in their last report of this kind in 2011. Mudgie explained why it was bollocks back then and nothing has changed since; it's still bollocks.

The report itself is the usual collection of pre-determined 'research', half-truths, selective arguments and junk opinions from professional finger-wagging misery guts, all wrapped up into a package of snake oil salesmanship designed to grab a few headlines and enrage the more bovine judgemental pricks in society.

However, one theme stands out for its stunning hypocrisy. You see, these alcohol-haters seem to think that they're a big friend of pubs now. No, seriously!

The former Chancellor stated that his programme of duty cuts was designed to protect the beleaguered pub, an admirable ambition given that they generally provide a safer, more controlled environment for drinking as well as being at the heart of so many communities. However, that ambition has not been realised. Pubs continue to close and the proportion of alcohol being sold from supermarkets and other off-trade premises has reached record levels.

They even provide this handy graphic. Look at them, they're thinking of those poor pubs, don't you see?

I bet the hospitality trade is so happy to have extremist temperance nuts on their side, and no mistake! Nuts like junk science-toting Andrea Crossfield of Healthier Futures, for example, who commented eagerly about this report on their website.

You may remember the name Andrea Crossfield because she used to be a tobacco controller. In fact, still is because Healthier Futures is just the new name for Tobacco Free Futures, an organisation which is hugely in favour of smoking bans which have helped close over 10,000 pubs since 2007. Andrea's interest, y'see, is that Healthier Futures is one of the four member organisations of the Alcohol Health Alliance (AHA) which produced today's report.

Now, it's more than arguable that the move from drinking in pubs to drinking at home which today's report complained about has been significantly impacted by the tobacco control industry driving smokers and their tolerant friends out of the on-trade for good. So isn't it a bit rich for the AHA to complain about the shift from drinking in a pub to drinking at home where you can relax and make up your own rules?

It's like Andrea flattening a shop with a steamroller then holding a hand out for more money from government to fix it.

The main spokesman, though, is Ian Gilmore, a tedious say-anything, do-anything, prohibitionist maggot who simply doesn't like anyone drinking alcohol and has been banging this dreary, joyless drum for nearly a decade now. He cares as much about pubs as most people care about syphilis, yet he too thinks the pubs argument is a winner.

We need to make excessively cheap alcohol less affordable through the tax system. In addition, a minimum unit price would target these products drunk by harmful drinkers, while barely affecting moderate drinkers. A minimum unit price would leave pub prices untouched.’

Well of course it would, for now. Because the architects of the ridiculous minimum alcohol pricing idea - Sheffield University's School of Health and Related Research (ScHARR) - have already laid out the plan for minimum pricing to be rolled out in pubs too, and I'm pretty sure puritanical Gilmore is aware of this.

Differential minimum pricing for on-trade and off-trade leads to more substantial reductions in consumption (30p off-trade together with an 80p on-trade minimum price -2.1% versus -0.6% for 30p only; 40p together with 100p -5.4% compared to -2.6% for 40p only). This is firstly because much of the consumption by younger and hazardous drinking groups (including those at increased risk of criminal offending due to high intake on a particular day) occurs in the on-trade. It is also because increasing prices of cheaper alcohol in the on-trade dampens down the behaviour switching effects when off-trade prices are increased. 

As you can see, as well as suggesting that the best outcome for 'public health' is a combination of minimum pricing of alcohol in supermarkets and pubs, they have also suggested which scaremongering tactic temperance shitsacks should use; to accuse the pub trade of harming youths and causing violence.

So while Gilmore today maintains that he's a friend of pubs and acting in their interests, in the back of his mind he is already planning an assault on them when - not if - any prospective minimum pricing folly doesn't work. Which it definitely wouldn't.

'Public health' positioning itself as being on the side of pubs is a novel approach, I'll give them that, but if anyone in the hospitality industry swallows it, they should realise that licensing headaches and irate neighbours will seem like a suburban tea party by the time weapons grade booze-hating lunatics like Gilmore are finished with them.

Home Smoking Bans: The Next Confidence Trick

Back in 2009, Deborah Arnott was caught off-guard and revealed the true extent of her prohibitionist ambitions.

It must have caught the fake charities as cold as it caught Forest though, as they were all wibbling at cross purposes.

Deborah Arnott, chief executive of Action on Smoking and Health (Ash), said the charity was in favour of a ban on smoking in cars.

The risks were not just to children but to adults suffering from conditions like heart disease, she said.

That's the problem with being caught off-guard, Debs wasn't able to tailor her junk science quickly enough to the nonsense in hand so had to just grab what she was working on at the time - the total ban on smoking in cars, with or without children present. An interesting view into the future, I thought.

At the time, she was selling a policy of banning smoking only in cars containing children. She was very clear about that and would have told every MP who would listen that it wasn't an assault on property rights at all, oh no, merely an issue of protecting kids from a mythical exaggerated danger that her and her professional bansturbators fabricated to keep the gravy train going.

That unguarded comment in 2009 revealed that she may have had it at the back of mind but we now have proof positive that she was lying to politicians back then; a total ban on smoking in cars has always been her long-term plan.

It was never about children just as it wasn't ever about bar staff, @ASH_LDN are incorrigible liars https://t.co/r3k5KAbvJq pic.twitter.com/vgajR2On42

— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) October 1, 2016

It seems that she has now let slip, via The Guardian, another future policy goal; a ban on smoking in private homes.

Deborah Arnott, the director of Action on Smoking and Health, said: “While the ban on smoking in indoor public places resulted in significant health benefits, thousands of children are still exposed to smoke in the home and elsewhere. Growing up in a smoke-free environment is one of the best ways of ensuring that they are not attracted to smoking and lured into a lifelong addiction and ill-health.”

We all knew it was an end-goal no matter the oleaginous weasel words Arnott and her pals like to spew about their respect for personal rights. But that's the clearest sign yet.

Arnott once proudly boasted of the "confidence trick" she employed to con politicians into depriving private businesses of their right to determine their own policies on smoking in their premises. I hear that at the recent Royal Society of Medicine event, which Simon Chapman's fans all avoided, she was equally gushing about how she had conned parliamentarians into going for plain packaging.

Which begs the question. How do you think Arnott is going to convince MPs that banning people who own their own homes from smoking in them is a wholesome and liberty-loving idea?

She'll have a con trick up her sleeve no doubt, liars always do.

Jeremy Hunt And The Bourgeois Pudding Police

I'm sure Jeremy Hunt might think this a clever political move to appease the insatiable health fascists instead of bowing to demands for "fat taxes", but I don't think I've ever seen anything more evil and sinister from the UK government as this. Ever.

From The Times who I understand carried it on their front page.

Restaurants ordered to reduce size of puddings

Cut calories or be named and shamed, Hunt says 

Restaurants, cafés and pubs will be named and shamed unless they make food portions smaller or less sweet, the government has said. 

Chains such as Pizza Express, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Gourmet Burger Kitchen have been told to “step up” by cutting sugar from food and reducing the size of desserts, cakes and croissants. Calorie-reduction targets for fatty, savoury foods will also be set.

Ordered to reduce the size of puddings. From a Conservative party which claims to believe in free markets, personal responsibility, and freedom of choice?

Un. Fucking. Believable!

Jeremy Hunt, the health secretary, told a private meeting of more than 100 food companies yesterday that “going out to eat is no longer a treat” because it is so common. Takeaways and sandwich shops would therefore be expected to take the same action as supermarkets and food manufacturers in tackling Britain’s obesity problem, he said.

What Hunt failed to mention, though, is that some of the most fat-laden, sugar-encrusted, high calorie/low-health dishes, served - soaked in butter, carbs and with lashings of other delightful nasties - in Michelin star restaurants, high-end eateries, swanky hotels and niche bistros selling to the posh; the well-paid middle class snoboisie; and the perennially arrogant types who sneer at working class tastes, won't be on this 'shame' list.

Yet I wonder when was the last time Jeremy Hunt last cooked a home meal from a few simple ingredients instead of being wined and dined. How many MPs routinely eat out so that it is "no longer a treat". I'd wager far far more than those on mediocre means who eat the puddings that this fuckstick wants to shame.

It won't matter to him or his cohort, because they're not the targets. Nope, it's just you proles and your irritating habit of choosing what you like to eat for yourselves every now and then instead of bowing to the will of the revolting people who can't abide anyone of the lower castes enjoying the same choices.

The contempt just oozes out of his disgusting fans.

Just saw a guy have a glass of coke, a cappuccino, a croissant and a ham & cheese sandwich for breakfast #OurNHSistoast #worldgonemad

— Kirstie Mary Allsopp (@KirstieMAllsopp) September 28, 2016

Beating up on others has never been more fashionable, has it?

It is genuinely terrifying how many people think it's OK to consume a cappuccino, a coke, a ham & cheese sarnie & a croissant in one meal.

— Kirstie Mary Allsopp (@KirstieMAllsopp) September 29, 2016

Terrifying? No. Terrifying is that there are people who believe that a) it is now acceptable for rancid bastards to express their shameful bigotry in public and b) that the government is on their side.

Because this is actually the case, backed up by those ghastly overpaid wankstains at Public Health England.

Public Health England (PHE) has promised this will be its priority and yesterday revealed the target would apply to all the main sources of sugar for children apart from soft drinks, which will be subject to a sugar tax.

Yes. It is now a "priority" to tell you what size pudding you should be ordering. Over and above the pointless and class-based impending sugar tax.

Cereals, confectionery, yoghurts, ice cream, sweet spreads and jams, cakes, biscuits and breakfast foods such as croissants must all become less sweet or smaller, PHE told the meeting.

You, the underclass, are too stupid to enjoy the good things in life. Know your place and eat small portions of gruel. It's for your own good, after all.

We used to tackle malnourishment, but now our government is trying to destroy the signals of economic success, simply because a few state-paid prohibitionists have whipped up the prejudices of a minority of anti-social bigots who don't like seeing the average citizen enjoying the fruits of our prosperity.

I know I say that things like this are none of their business quite a lot, but this really isn't. The choices have already been made. Businesses don't offer large sizes of puddings because they are bullying people into eating more, it is is the result of competition because the public have demanded them.

Hunt is effectively saying that consumers are not entitled to make choices for themselves and businesses are not allowed to cater for those choices. Well, unless they are charging fortunes for high-end products for people who really do eat only rich food at restaurants 7 days a week ... like, erm, politicians. In which case it's fine and dandy.

I couldn't put it better than Action on Consumer Choice:

In effect, the government has now decided that we're getting too much food for our money. For our own good, it will pressure food producers, takeaway joints, restaurants and pubs to serve us less. 

This is an unwarranted attack on freedom to choose what we eat. It's quite easy to regulate how much sugar we consume. We can choose different products that contain less sugar, pick a portion size that suits us or simply not clear our plates. There is no mystery here. We should have the right to make those decisions and take responsibility for the consequences of them, too. (And that includes ignoring the wild scare stories about how what we eat is killing us.) Yet the government is insulting our intelligence by suggesting that we can't make such decisions for ourselves. 

Just a few years ago, the idea of the government deciding how much we eat would have been regarded as ludicrous. Yet politicians are so desperate to be seen to be 'doing something' about obesity that they want to make chocolate bars, puddings and other sweet treats smaller. Never mind that childhood obesity has plateaued, even fallen, over the past 10 years. Politicians need something to have a crusade about, and today's crusade is against sugar. So we can look forward to ever-blander food - and less of it, too.

The state is increasingly not just not your friend, but actively despises you. I can only hope that he is playing some political game where the public gets angry and bites back against the health nazis that plague decent society.

If Jamie Oliver and his insane hypocritical dishes are on the name and shame list the fair enough, but if not this is just a load of malodorous elitists telling you you're not allowed to spend your money in the same way that they do.

Marie Antoinette was slaughtered for less.

See also: A Triumph For Repulsive Anti-Social Snobbery