Wednesday 13 October 2010

The Smoke War.

David Nuttall, MP for Bury North, introduced a bill that sought to relax the bile and spite of the smoking ban. It failed, but not by anywhere near as much as ASH and the rest of the Fourth Reich would have liked. Despite their bringing out their pet attack dog to do their bidding, the vote, although lost, was not lost by all that much. The fight is not only not over, we are gaining ground.

The comments on Mr. Nuttall's original post were the usual "Ohh, its a bit smelly!" "Ohh, I have to wash and soap makes me itchy!" "Ohh, I might catch cancer!" from the general pool of ASH idiot-speak that a few of the masses have latched on to in lieu of real life. They really aren't anywhere near as numerous as they would like us to believe, and they are nowhere near as brave when confronted as they pretend. Best of all, their stupidity means they can be convinced of all sorts of things. I have not yet scared one to death but I continue to try. Cancer as a communicable disease? Death by odour? I didn't convince the idiots of that. ASH did. But I am perfectly willing to play with it.

We are now faced with the insanity of a claim that smoking produces methane. Methane. That's right. Natural gas. Gas that burns. Gas that ignites so easily that phosphene can do it in swamps. Yes, the idiots actually believe that a burning object can produce a combustible gas. I can hear scientific heads hitting desks all over the world. Except in Climatology labs where they are designing something to measure it and produce the required result. Just make it up guys, it's what you do anyway and it's cheaper that way.

You want to believe it? Fine. If you meet me, I will amplify it, and prove to you that asteroids home in on cigarette smoke and the nearer you are to me, the more likely you are to be hit. Run! No, run faster than that, there's a big one coming.

What mystifies me is the tobacco industry's stance on all this. They meekly add horrible warnings to packets even though they are to be hidden from view and even though they must know that the warnings are lies. They restrict overseas supplies when instructed even though it should make no difference to them where it's bought. They get the profit anyway, the difference is tax. Then they whine about Man with a Van selling 'contraband' that isn't. It's not illegal to buy any amount of tobacco anywhere in the EU and then take it to another part of the EU. It is illegal to run a business that pays no tax, as Man with a Van does, but that has nothing to do with what he sells. The tobacco is not, in itself, illegal.

The tobacco companies are not affected by this faux-smuggling. The tobacco has been bought, they have their profits, for them it makes no difference if Man with a Van sells it on. The only ones who lose out are the ever-hungry grasping fingers of government, who don't get the duty they need to smack down smokers harder. They try to make us feel guilty for not funding our own oppression and can't understand why we laugh at them.

So why are the tobacco industry even remotely interested in Man with a Van? He makes no difference to their profits. He pays their profits in another country.

It sounds rather like those pub collectives who blame anything but the smoking ban as the reason I, and millions like me, no longer prop up their bars. For me, and millions more, there really is no other reason. Price is irrelevant. I have been happy to spend money on pub prices in the past. It's not the booze, it's the company and we are now excluded from that. We don't pay 'for the pint'. If we just wanted 'the pint' we have always been able to get it cheaper in the supermarket. Always. It's not a new thing. No, we pay a premium to sit in the premises with our friends and maybe meet new ones.

We do not pay a premium to smoke in the rain, nor in a shelter that is illegal under animal welfare laws.

Like the pubs, the tobacco companies are blind to their real enemy. It is not the customer. It is those who hate that customer.

Yet they blame the customer. The pubs blame those who 'no longer support the local pub'. We should be supporting a business that despises us. Yes, and the BNP can legitimately complain that black people don't vote for them. I can't speak for anyone else but personally, I don't go to places where I am clearly not welcome.

The tobacco companies tell us we are evil smokers and shouldn't be buying their produce. Okay. Next year I start growing my own. It'll take a couple of years before I am free of Man with a Van but eventually there will be no more tobacco profits from me, so they can stop moaning. I wonder if I can make wine from the flowers? That would kick Buckfast into a cocked hat and send the Righteous into heart attack territory. Booze with nicotine in it. It has to be worth a try.

I'm denormalised. I'm a monster. I didn't create myself. Antismokers made me. Once I was just a guy who smoked but now I am a demon with a little bit of hell fire sticking out of my face. Well, that's what you wanted, isn't it, antismokers? You wanted absolute, untempered evil and here it is. Remember, you made it. I didn't. I'm the creation, not the creator. So when your kids come home crying, convinced they have hours to live because they harangued the stumpy smoker, remember, you wished it on them. You convinced them of my demonic power.

Don't think I won't use it.

What's that? Unfair? Nasty? Cruel? you think I shouldn't tell lies to your children? You think I should show decency and honour, antismokers? Like you?

Yes, like you. Your game, your rules. Truth is irrelevant, spin and lies are the weapons of the war. I'm your Frankenstein, antismokers, and I am not the only one.

We cannot rely on anyone, not even those who supply the tobacco we enjoy. The pubs pretend we don't matter and the Cleggeron Coagulation pretend we don't exist. Grow your own or buy from companies that are not at all connected to the UK government. They hate us, don't pay them to do it. If you can scare an antismoker into psychosomatic cancer, do it. They would do it to you. No mercy, no compromise, no prisoners. Not my rules. Antismoker rules. Fight on their terms because ours are too gentle.

There are 86 MPs on our side. We have not yet been defeated. The matter is far from settled.

This ban will break, If there is collateral damage among antismokers and their families, that's a shame. Always remember, we didn't start this war and we didn't define the rules of combat. Forget guilt and remorse, this is not a fair fight we are engaged in and if we show any trace of weakness, we lose. If antismokers find their children terrified, too bad. We did not convince those children of the boogeyman of second hand smoke, they did. Play with it and feel no shame when they run screaming.

Really, what can we lose? There is nothing left to us anyway. We are below paedophiles and the anally challenged already. We are barred from pubs and clubs and railway platforms and bus stations in case we interfere with the diesel fumes those antismokers love. There is nothing left to lose. The government are in the pocket of ASH and they will not listen.

We are fighting a war in which we cannot lose any more. So take off the gloves, forget compromise, and light up the tabs of war.



The enemy is merciless. Show none in return.

14 comments:

Pete said...

Out of interest:

Was flying back from Spain Monday evening - Easyjet were selling e-cigs and giving permission to vape on flight!

Indyanhat said...

Click..suck...aaaahhhh!! good post LI will have to do one of my own soon!

Anonymous said...

I was in my Club yesterday with some friends. We all decided to light up- there were not many people around. It was very liberating... As ever, if enough people break this ban, it becomes unenforcable, so I felt I was just doing my bit.

Liz said...

OK, OK I don't agree with demonising anyone, whatever unhealthy habits they may have but as an asthma suffered I am very happy that I don't have to breathe other people's smoke any more when I go to the pub.

Anonymous said...

LI

I wouldn't bother making wine from the flowers, but they are very good just dried and smoked.The temperature on the top of my modem is perfect.
Virginia seems to be best, I tried Havana and Perique, but they were to harsh for me.

"Only the green part of the blossom was kept. The white part I always threw away; it was of no value."
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/buffalo/garden/garden.html#XIII

This might interest you though, I found them in my local brewshop.
http://www.gtp.com.au/westbrew/inewsfiles/BROCHURE%20-%20SS%20Spirits.pdf

Of course it is illegal to distill in this country, but now I am toying with flavouring my cider with Peat Smoke.

Peat smoke
"A strong, almost pungent peat smoke flavour which is a main component in most whiskeys."

I'm hoping that someone will talk me out of it, I could ruin the lot.

Rose

Anonymous said...

Anon 9.51. What sort of club is it? You are doing your bit. This is the ban will eventually fail.

PT Barnum said...

In 1933 Jews constituted less than 1% of the total population of Germany (and it obviously fell significantly after that). Now, it is much easier to tell lies and have them believed about a group of people which many will have no direct contact with. Even at conservative estimates, smokers stand at 18-20% of the UK population. If the antismoking facists think they deploy successfully the same tactics used to denormalise the Jews and make them worthy of persecution and destruction, then they really are stupid as well as wicked. We ain't going away, Debbie.

PT Barnum said...

Oh, and here's some science. Based on my detailed research, 75% of asthmatics (3 out of 4 I know) declare that smoking, active or passive, helps their asthma. Therefore, in the interests of public health, smoking should be compulsory for asthmatics.

Anonymous said...

Inspiring, LI

Mesmer

Jeff Wood said...

Liz, I hope your bar stays in business. They are closing at quite a rate.

In fact you, and the rest of us, should have a choice. Bars should have the right to allow, restrict, or ban smoking, all as they choose. The customers can then choose which bars to patronise. Simples.

Did you know that the apparent rise in asthma rates in the last 40 years has gone along with a strong decline in the rate of smoking in the same period?

Anonymous said...

PT Barnum

This might explain it.

Treatment of Asthma by Nicotinic Acid - 1943
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2282923/pdf/brmedj03990-0011.pdf

Nicotinic acid - May 7 1941
"We find that the smoke from ordinary Ripple cigarettes contains the anti - pellagra vitamin or nicotinic acid in fairly substantial amounts."
http://tobaccodocuments.org/product_design/04365489-5491.html

Rose

Anonymous said...

"We are now faced with the insanity of a claim that smoking produces methane."

As I have said boringly often, the claims of anti-smokers have become increasingly bizarre and desperate since the ban came in, and their usefulness to the powers-that-be has as a result pretty much withered away.

But, this one really is a beauty. Having failed to ignite the interest of either the media or the public with countless tortuous and tenuous connections to virtually all the ailments and illnesses not already connected with smoking, they’ve now decided to cling desperately onto the coat-tails of one of the newer “big boys on the block” in the hope of reviving their flagging fortunes.

I sometimes think that they must kick themselves for having played their trump cards of “smoking causes cancer” and “smoking causes heart disease” so early on in the game because it’s left them with only throwaway cards to play. What a shame they haven’t noticed that the whole Climate Change story, in the wake of Climategate and – in no small measure because of their own constant hectoring and one-eyed preoccupation and plain downright lies - is now pretty much dying in the water, too, as far as public interest goes.

It seems that they have been hoist by their own “confidence trick” petard, by believing it too much themselves. They were just “too confident” to contemplate that – Shock! Horror! – many people actually might not like the ban once it was in.

Quelle shame!! I’d almost feel sorry for them if I didn’t despise them so much ……..

alfstone said...

"asteroids home in on cigarette smoke"

Who will be first to produce a peer reviewed paper proving that this is true. My money is on ASH.

smokervoter said...

"It's not illegal to buy any amount of tobacco anywhere in the EU and then take it to another part of the EU."

Do you then have to pay the UK tax when you get home with it? Do people go on tobacco buying vacations there? This is truly fascinating.

When two states have a big tax differential here, the state with the steeper levy then restricts the amount you can possess on your being at one time. When it comes to all things tobacco, we switch over to Red Chinese authoritarian-capitalism at the drop of a hat.

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