“It is extraordinary that a government which claims to be against excessive regulation should be contemplating a law which even the provisional wing of the anti-smoking lobby considered unthinkable until very recently. It seems that fanaticism has become institutionalised and a handful of extremists have become the de facto policy makers in matters related to tobacco. The public are gradually waking up to the fact that these neo-prohibitionists will never be satisfied. There is always another cause to campaign for, always new demands to be met. If it is not smoking, it is drinking. If it is not drinking, it is eating.”

It is indeed extraordinary, and fanaticism does indeed seem to have become institutionalised, and policy is now being made by extremists, and by nobody else.

I found myself wondering whether there have been any examples at all of fanatical antismoking measures which have ever been kicked into touch. We have the comprehensive and draconian smoking ban, and on the way we have the removal of tobacco shop displays and and the introduction of plain packaging. There are also calls for in-car smoking bans, and outdoor bans as well (e.g. Stony Stratford). How long before smoking is banned outdoors and in cars? How long before smoking is then banned in people’s own homes? Is there any point where this government will say Enough Is Enough?

I’m beginning to think that there isn’t, and fanaticism really has become institutionalised, and now completely determines policy. One measure after another is suggested, publicised, and then implemented. There is a minimum of ‘consultation’, during which objections (such as those by tobacco retailers) are ignored. The proposals just get rammed through anyway. The decisions have already been made.

Then there was that Your Choice online public ‘consultation’ a year or so back in which calls for an end to the smoking ban were ignored, with Nick Clegg saying that the death penalty would be introduced before the smoking ban was lifted. So much for online public consultation.

Is there any point, in such circumstances, in anyone going along with this charade of public consultation, and appearing on TV or radio with the likes of Deborah Arnott? It only helps the government make it look like they’re consulting, when in fact they’re not.

And I increasingly feel that the same is happening with AGW alarmism. Despite the rise in public scepticism – particularly since Climategate -, the UK government appears to be hell bent on continuing with its ruinous carbon emission targets, and last year’s BBC report in the aftermath of Climategate concluded that sceptics (or “deniers”) should not be granted any more of a hearing than they ever were. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way of this separate extremist agenda either.

It’s looks more and more as if there is a timetable of events. And the next stage will be to start restricting alcohol, and many varieties of foods. These proposals will also be accompanied by more fake public consultations, and then rammed through anyway, regardless of any opposition.

Deborah Arnott: Well [giggle], the Adam Smith Institute is well known for taking money from the tobacco industry, so you do have to question how independent this report is. It’s a classic tobacco industry argument to say that regulation doesn’t work. It’s used to argue against the ban on smoking in public places, the advertising ban, all sorts of other measures, all of which have been very successful. And on the evidence, well, peer-reviewed studies from around the world consistently show that plain packs are less appealing particularly to young people, strengthen the impact of health warnings, and reduce the ability of packaging to mislead consumers about the harms of smoking. We have to remember that over 100,000 smokers die each year, and this is an addiction of childhood, with two thirds of smokers starting before they’re sixteen.

Today Presenter: Christopher Snowdon, first of all on that question, do the Adam Smith Institute take money from the tobacco industry?

Chris Snowdon: I understand that there is less than three percent of their turnover from tobacco companies…

So, the very first thing that Arnott did was to say that the Adam Smith Institute was being funded by Big Tobacco (and so, unstated, of course they were going to come out against plain packaging). And although Arnott then went on to say a lot more (and to me it sounded like she was reading it all out), it was the Big Tobacco funding that the presenter picked up and threw at Chris Snowdon, doubling its impact by repeating it. And Chris Snowdon responded defensively by playing down the amount of money received.

I’ve heard exchanges of this sort dozens of times now, and it’s always like this. But wouldn’t it be refreshing if somebody were to instead respond like this :

Somebody: Yeah, it’s really great that the tobacco companies are providing a bit of funding. Thanks for pointing it out. They’re wonderful people. I wish they’d provide a lot more. We’ve got a helluva fight on our hands, and we can do with all the help we can get.

But I’ve never heard anybody ever say anything like that. And yet more and more I feel that something like this needs to be said. Because, for me, tobacco companies just don’t seem to be in the least bit evil or satanic in the way that Deborah Arnott clearly sees them. As far as I’m concerned, it’s the pharma companies that these days fill the role once played by Big Bad Tobacco.

There are several reasons that I’ve begun to think this way. And the first reason is that, while it was only the tobacco companies that were being publicly demonised over the past half century, their customers are now being demonised too. So we’re all in the same boat together. We’re all demonised now. And so we ought to unite. It’s not just demonised smokers that should unite with other demonised smokers all around the world, but that demonised smokers should unite with demonised tobacco companies.

The second reason is that, over the past 7 or 8 years that my attention has turned to the issue of smoking, I’ve been gradually forming the opinion that all tobacco research is complete tripe. The whole lot of it – from its Nazi origins all the way up to the present day. And my reasoning – which I’ve been gradually developing – is that none of it is worthy of the name of science, because in real science very great care is taken to accurately measure quantities like mass and length and time using carefully defined units like kilograms and metres and seconds, yet in tobacco research nothing is measured accurately and all the units are ill-defined. And if you’re not measuring things accurately, you’re not doing science. Tobacco research isn’t any sort of science: it’s a form of numerology or astrology, just like the Nazi racial science which it grew up alongside. And the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that all the charges (e.g. smoking causes lung cancer) laid against the tobacco companies by antismoking researchers are false charges, or unproven charges, and that the tobacco companies are most likely innocent on all counts. And accordingly it is the duty of everyone (and not just smokers) to go to their aid.

And the third reason is that, regardless of what the claims against tobacco might be, they constitute a full scale assault upon a whole way of life, upon a cultural tradition, and upon the personal identities of many millions of people. A cultural war is now being waged not just against tobacco, but also alcohol, and on the foods that people eat. It’s a cultural war against the whole of western consumer society, and it’s getting  ever more all-encompassing and aggressive and abusive. An attempt is being made to suppress an entire culture, and to defame and exclude countless millions of people because they smoke or drink or are ‘too fat’. And this must be fought tooth and nail. We are faced with a monstrous enemy, and the enemies of this enemy are our friends. And the tobacco companies are perhaps the greatest enemies of our terrible enemy. And so the tobacco companies are our friends.

Each of these reasons, on its own, is sufficient to justify making common cause with tobacco companies. And it should be pointed out in no uncertain terms that when people like Deborah Arnott defame tobacco companies, they are now also defaming millions upon millions of smokers.

We should be proud smokers, and proud of the companies that supply us our tobacco.

After all, what sort of person is it who will say, “Here, have a nice piece of rump steak, but for heaven’s sake don’t tell anyone I bought it from Jones the butcher”? What they should be saying is: “Here, have a nice piece of rump steak. I got it from that wonderful butcher, Mr Jones. He really does do the finest cuts.”

As an Englishman, part of my identity is bound up in brand names. Names like Marmite and Bovril and Hovis and Guinness and Ovaltine and Rolls Royce and Sainsburys and Tetleys and Wedgwood and hundreds more. They are all evocative of a time and a place. They are as meaningful as names like Shakespeare and Newton and Wordsworth and Churchill. Or London or Manchester or Liverpool. I’m sure that everyone reading this, wherever in the world they live, has a similar collection of names and places and people with whom they identify.

Organisations like ASH and WHO are shitting on our culture. Yes, shitting. They are shitting on everything. They have set out to dirty and defame everything. They want to make people ashamed of themselves. They want to make people ashamed that they smoke, ashamed that they drink, ashamed that they eat meat, ashamed that they drive cars, ashamed that they go on holiday, ashamed of everything.

They want me to be ashamed of being English.

Well, I’m fucking well not in the least bit ashamed.

And I never will be. And nobody else should be either, whoever they are and wherever they live.

Ban smoking in beer gardens to stop social smokers from lighting up, experts say

The smoking ban should be extended to beer gardens and areas outside pubs and bars to tackle a rise in ‘social smoking’, a group of experts has said.

It’s always ‘experts’, isn’t it? Or ‘doctors’. Or ‘researchers’.

But it’s good to know it’s experts. Wouldn’t want to hear absolutely anybody’s opinion, would I? No.

And I’m an expert too. I’m an expert at all sorts of things. I’m certainly an expert smoker. I’ve got decades of experience. And I’m an expert drinker too. I can pick up a glass or a mug and drink its contents without spilling any of it. And I’m pretty expert at talking as well. Words come out of my mouth with a perfect English accent. And one after another rather than all at the same time.

And I like to meet up with other experts like myself, and have a few beers and smokes, and talk about expert stuff.

A test group of 13 people who identified themselves as social smokers aged between 19 and 25 discovered that they found it difficult to reconcile their stated identity as non-smokers who smoke.

So, right, the bunch of experts went to a pub garden and got talking to a few people sitting at other tables. Nice work if you can get it.

Good sized sample there. All of 13 people! My, my. When I get talking to people, it’s usually only one or two. But then, if I stay all day, it can get to be as much as 12 – 15. So the experts must’ve spent all day at the pub chatting to people. Either that, or there were 13 experts, and they each spoke to one person. And most likely the same person.

And that person said, “I’m a social smoker aged between 19 and 25.”  It’s understandable if some people are a bit vague about things like ages after they’ve had a few beers. When I met a couple of pretty Japanese girls in a Fukuoka bar a few years back, I told them I was aged 33 – but that I’d had a few too many beers the previous night and might be looking quite a lot older. And I wasn’t making things up. I had indeed had a few too many beers the previous night.

Anyway, the social smoker aged between 19 and 25 that the 13 experts got talking to said he was a “non-smoker who smoked”. Which reminded me of Joan Bakewell. She’s another non-smoker who smokes. There seem to be rather a lot of them.

And I think maybe I’ll become one of these “non-smokers who smoke” too. Or perhaps a “smoker who doesn’t smoke’. One or the other. Or both. It’s a bit of a conflict.

They managed this conflict by limiting where and when they smoked and by sharply differentiating themselves from ‘addicted’ smokers to whom, by and large, they felt superior, using several strategies.

I too differentiate myself from other ‘addicted’ smokers. They’re a real pain. I have complete contempt for people who are addicted to smoking.  I’m not addicted to smoking. I’m addicted to air. The cigarette smoke is just a flavouring I add to air. I can do without the flavouring, but I can’t do without the air.

These included claiming never to smoke alone; asserting that they controlled when, where, and how much they smoked; and defining their smoking as ‘a temporary phase.’

Me too. I never smoke alone. A cigarette is an instant friend. “You’re never alone with a Strand.” And my smoking is ‘a temporary phase’ thing too. I’ve only been doing it for the past 45 years or so.

They also rationalised their smoking by saying that it only happened when they had been drinking, describing smoking and drinking as going ‘hand in hand.’

That’s exactly right. Wine and beer are perfect. But tea and coffee are just as good. In fact more or less anything will do. And best of all when it’s hand in hand with a pretty girl. A beer, a cigarette, and a pretty girl. What more could a man want?

Some said that alcohol prompted cravings for a cigarette, which they wouldn’t otherwise experience.

I’m like that too. When I buy some fish at a fish and chip shop, I almost always want some chips to go with it. And some salt and vinegar. And maybe some tomato ketchup. Funny that. And when I put a shoe on one foot in the morning, I always immediately want to put a shoe on the other one too. Funny that too.

Anyway, this latest piece of peer-reviewed tobacco research not only got into the Daily Mail, but also the Daily Telegraph. I wonder how that happened? Maybe there were some Daily Mail reporters sitting outside the pub too?

Campaigners say that a ban on smoking outside bars and pubs could improve public health, and described people who smoke on patios and pavements as “anti-social”.

Well, it is anti-social to go outside for a smoke. People should stay inside, obviously.

Most “social smokers”, who only reach for a cigarette while on a night out, support the idea of extending smoking ban legislation to cover such areas, according to academics.

Surely if they only smoke on nights out, the ban should be on nights out?

The academics, writing in the journal Tobacco Control, concluded that introducing a policy of smoke-free bars would help social smokers quit by “changing the environment that facilitates it”.

Ah, they’ve turned into ‘academics’ in the Telegraph. Maybe they were expert academics. Or academic experts. Or expert academic reporters.

Strange bunch of academics though. They can’t even go into a pub, and sit down and have a beer or two, without doing a bit of research into the ‘social smokers’ they find there. They can’t just sit nattering about the weather and the football or what was on telly last night, like everybody else does. Nope.  It seems to be a strange compulsion of theirs. They’ve got to squeeze in a bit more research, as soon as they see anyone smoking. All written on the back of a beer mat, and stuck in a back pocket.

Except these guys don’t need to write stuff down. You don’t need to in Tobacco Research. They can just remember it all the next day. Or the next week. They’ve got perfect memories. They know how many cigarettes they’ve smoked in their lives, and how many cups of coffee they’ve drunk, and how many ham sandwiches they’ve eaten.They can recite word for word entire conversations they had last week, or last year. Tobacco research is like that. None of the careful records kept by physicists and astronomers and other scientists. No need for it. Perfect memory, you see.

Actually, I’ve got a perfect memory too. I can remember everything I ever ate. You don’t believe me? Go on, and ask me what I had for lunch on any date in the past 50 years. Any date at all. 13 June 1967? Let’s see, that was cod and chips in the Birmingham Arms in Hungerford. 4 August 1979? That was, mmmm, bangers and mash in the transport caff just east of Watford, and a very nice caramel sorbet surprise afterwards. 15 February 1985? Steak, chips, beans, tomatoes, and carrots, followed by steamed rolly-polly pudding and custard at the Waldorf hotel in Casablanca. 12 August 1997? Fricasee of lamb on rice, with courgettes and harricot beans, followed by apple crumble and evaporated milk at the Maitre Chef in Montparnasse.

See? I remember it all perfectly.

I think that, when it gets warmer, I’m going to do some of this pub garden research myself. After all, I’ve established that I’m an expert. I think I’ll just a spend a few sunny afternoons chatting to people in pub gardens. I won’t use a notebook. I’ll just rely on memory. Maybe over a few months I’ll manage to talk to 12 or 13 people. These days it seems that’s all that’s needed.

And come up with stuff like, “If smoking ban isn’t relaxed, 6 out of 7 smokers will move on to harder drugs next year.” Or “Most smokers do Not want to stop smoking, and wish Deborah Arnott would just Drop Dead.” Something like that.

Should be dead easy to get it into the Daily Mail.

Dialogue with Archbishop Rowan Williams and Professor Richard Dawkins

Philosopher Sir Anthony Kenny will chair a dialogue between the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and Professor Richard Dawkins on the subject of “The nature of human beings and the question of their ultimate origin.” The event will be held in the Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford University, and will be hosted by the Sofia Europa Group of the Theology Faculty.

A webcast of the discussion will be screened live on the homepage of this website www.archbishopofcanterbury.org on Thursday 23rd February 16:00-17:30, and will also be available after the event.

Sounds a bit like Sonny Liston v. Cassius Clay. I’ll have to get some popcorn.

I suppose that my views on evolution go roughly like this: I completely accept the idea of evolution, and have done so ever since I first heard of it at age 10 (I was born 64 years ago exactly today). It seemed blindingly obvious. However, Darwinism (which I regard as slightly different from the theory of evolution) seems to me to be Darwin’s particular version of the theory, and it’s a rather bloody and brutal version – a veritable “war of nature”, with everything against everything else -. I think this was maybe just Darwin’s dramatisation of the process of evolution, but it seems to have been his lasting legacy, and I personally find it slightly nasty. It’s from Darwin’s “war of nature” that we get the idea of dinosaurs attacking on sight (as in Jurassic Park). Yet Darwinists always venerate Darwin almost as a secular saint or prophet, and regard him as a genius on a par with Newton or Einstein. They won’t hear a word of criticism of him. And Richard Dawkins is a Darwinist of just this sort.

And for Richard Dawkins Darwinism does indeed seem to have become a religion. And this is why he goes round attacking all other religions, and this is what I find slightly nasty about him. For I tend to see religions as being the source of morality and codes of conduct. And I don’t find any moral code at all in Darwinism, apart from a sort of brutal competition. Nor do I know of any set of moral precepts that Richard Dawkins has developed from his Darwinism.

Not everyone agrees with me about this. A lot of people seem to think that morality doesn’t need to be taught, and that “everyone knows” what’s right and what’s wrong, and it’s all perfectly obvious. I wish I could agree, but I can’t. For example, throughout antiquity slavery was accepted as normal, yet nowadays it’s regarded as utterly abhorrent. Somehow or other, what “everybody knows” now isn’t the same as what everybody knew a couple of thousand years ago. The same applies to the status of women, animals, and so on. There are lots of things that were once wrong which have become right. And vice versa.

For example, the smoking ban has always seemed to me to be profoundly morally repugnant (and also unforgivable) for a whole raft of reasons. But other people clearly disagree, and have no qualms at all about, say, evicting 97-year-old smokers from their homes. This is another example of what “everybody knows” varying from one person to another, and from one time to the next.

Some people might say that we don’t need “religion” as such for moral education. But what other sources are there? It’s true that there have been a variety of moral teachings arising from secular sources – e.g. Utilitarianism -, but none of them seem to have achieved the universality of Christian ethical teachings. It’s not that I don’t think that a rational ethical code cannot be constructed: it’s just that I don’t think we’ve got one yet.

Richard Dawkins was raised as an Anglican, and was no doubt imbued with the Anglican variant of Christian morality (as was Darwin before him), and probably retains that set of values to this day. But when fewer and fewer people are raised in such a Christian tradition in our increasingly post-Christian world, who is to know what their ideas of right and wrong will be, or whether they will agree with anybody else’s?

It’s for this reason that I’ll be supporting the Archbishop on Thursday, and hoping he lands a knockout punch in round one. But I suspect it’s more likely to go the other way, and Richard Dawkins will continue the gradual demolition of Christian civilisation, while having absolutely nothing to replace it with. Which strikes me as sheer vandalism, and rather like demolishing Canterbury Cathedral and building a multi-storey car park over it – except far worse.

Christianity provided a shared culture and set of values. When it’s gone, we will no longer have a shared culture or a shared set of values. Because we have nothing to put in its place. All we have are a variety of rival cults – Environmentalism is just one example, Healthism another – being advanced by ferocious zealots. I often think that rising Muslim fundamentalism simply mirrors growing zealotry in the Western world, and our zealots breed their zealots.

I hope that in their debate they’ll raise one or two of the issues I’ve just raised, but I don’t expect they will.

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“Jerry’s late today.”

Edward ‘Biffo’ Bentham spoke to nobody in particular, as he sat back in his wicker chair in the dispersal, cradling a mug of cocoa in his hands. The sun was shining brightly, and the riggers and fitters were busy working on the Spitfires on the grass in front of him. A petrol bowser trundled by.

“Cloud over St Omer,” the C.O. said. “They’ll be here in about half an hour.” He twirled his handlebar moustache absent-mindedly with his forefinger.

Andrew ‘Boozy’ Bagshawe leaned forward. ”I gather the new M.O. has arrived. Have they cleared up the bits of the last one yet?” he asked from his leather armchair in front of the mess office, as he leafed through an old copy of the Daily Sketch.

The C.O. pulled thoughtfully on his pipe. “We’ll probably find out in a few minutes.”

The telephone rang. The C.O. answered it, listened carefully, and then hung up.

“Scramble, chaps,” he called out. “Jerry’s coming.”

The pilots sprinted to their planes, started the engines, and as the ground crews pulled the chocks from their wheels, began rolling across the grass towards the runway. ‘Boozy’ Bagshawe was the first to turn onto it, with the other planes lining up behind him. He’d just opened the throttle of the Merlin engine, and begun to accelerate, when he noticed a figure standing by a car parked on the runway ahead, waving a white scarf.

He sighed and cut the engine and rolled to a stop beside the figure. The squadron behind him stopped too. He jumped out of his cockpit onto the wing, slid down onto the ground, and found himself in front of Doc Adams, the new M.O..

“What’s up, Doc?” Boozy asked.

“I can’t allow it,” Doc Adams replied, his voice shaking. “I can’t allow you young lads to put your health at risk like this. You could die. You could die premature deaths.”

“Bleeding heck, Doc,” shouted ‘Leggy’ Allsop, who’d come running up. “Jerry’s coming. We’ve got to get into the air.” The other pilots soon arrived, panting and unbuttoning their flying jackets.

With raised hands, Doc Adams signalled for silence. “Now listen to me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to save the lives of bloody fools like you lot. Fools who keep putting their lives needlessly at risk. And it’s got to stop. And prevention is better than cure.”

“Life is a precious thing,” he went on. “It’s the most precious thing we have. It’s really all we’ve got. It’s more important than king or country, god or money, freedom or democracy. Those things are all illusions. They’re unreal. It’s only this that’s real,” he said, jabbing a finger into Biffo’s chest. “This real, living, flesh and blood man.”

“I hadn’t looked at it that way before, sir,” Biffo said, staring hard at the ground. Yes, the bits of the last one had been cleared away.

“You’ve got your whole lives before you,” Doc continued, climbing up onto the bonnet of his Sunbeam, and gazing down on the men with a fatherly eye. “Don’t throw them away needlessly. Your body is a temple. Look after it. And don’t pollute it with tobacco or alcohol.”

“And Jerry’s life is precious too,” Doc Adams declared,  sounding more and more like an evangelical preacher warming to a sermon. “All life is precious. The birds are precious. The trees are precious. The grass beneath your feet is precious.”

Biffo stared even harder at the grass between his feet. Perhaps there were still a few traces of blood after all.

“What about slugs?” Phil ‘Airfix’ Williams asked from the back.

“They’re precious too,” Doc Adams replied. “The whole earth is precious. The earth is itself a living thing. If you could see it from outer space, it would look like… like…”

“A little blue droplet of life?” Charlie ‘Buster’ Jones suggested helpfully.

“Yes, exactly,” Doc Adams replied. “My, my.  That is very remarkable. You seem to know some of this already!”

The C.O. pulled up in his staff car. “What the hell’s going on?” he said as he jumped out.

“It’s Doc Adams, sir,” Charles ‘Jumbo’ Wilkins muttered. “He’s been telling us that our lives are precious. He doesn’t want us to get hurt or killed or anything.”

“Get back in your planes, and take off immediately.” the C.O. ordered. “Jerry’ll be here any minute now.”

The pilots climbed back into their Spitfires and began to accelerate down the runway again. As the last one lifted off, the C.O. turned and looked up at Doc Adams, still standing on the bonnet of his car.

“You’d better explain all that to Jerry too, Doc. Here he comes now. Give him a wave with that scarf of yours.”

The sound of an engine began to fill the air. The anti-aircraft guns began firing. On the horizon, a lone Messerschmitt 109 appeared, flying very low, straight towards them.

Doc Adams turned to face the approaching plane, and began waving his white scarf, as the C.O. jumped nimbly into a sand bunker beside the runway.

As the 109 howled across the airfield towards them, the grass around the Sunbeam began to erupt as machine gun bullets tore into it. The car shuddered under the impact, and when the first cannon shells began striking,  the resulting explosion engulfed Doc Adams.

As the 109 thundered past just above the flaming wreck, Jerry leaned out of its cockpit, grinning broadly and giving a thumbs up. And the C.O. stood up and waved back. He counted all of 16 stethoscopes stencilled under the cockpit hatch. There’d be another one added tonight.

And already the ground crews were coming in a truck to clear up the bits.

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And goodbye Whitney.

Jane O’Grady is 97 years old.

She is hard of hearing and has a glass eye.

And, much to the chagrin of a local assisted and independent living facility, she smokes.

The Lakes at Pointe West has told her she will be evicted if she doesn’t stop smoking inside her one-bedroom apartment.

Do you think that the management at the Lakes should be petitioned to allow her to stay? Do you think that letters should be written to congressmen? Do you think there should be a Big Debate about it? And, more to the point, do you think that the politically-correct ‘progressive’ antismokers who want Jane O’Grady evicted are going to change their minds?

These people don’t do debate. They don’t listen to petitions. They don’t read letters. They don’t compromise at all. It’s their way or it’s the highway. And in Jane O’Grady’s case, it’s going to be the highway.

And anyway there shouldn’t even need to be a debate. Evicting someone from their home for being a smoker is just plain wrong. And it shouldn’t need anyone to be told that it’s wrong. Because it’s quite manifestly an utterly vile, Nazi kind of behaviour.

And ultimately, I believe these people are going to have to be fought in exactly the same way their Nazi predecessors were fought – in pitched battle. Because when debate has become impossible, and democracy has broken down, and justice has vanished, and society is divided, all that’s left is open warfare.

What else can there be?

Civil war is what’s slowly coming down the track. But it’s not going to be a civil war quite like any other. In the first place, it’s not going to be fought in any one single country. It’s going to be fought all over the world. And it’s not going to be fought by soldiers in uniforms, marching in step with rifles on their shoulders. It’s going to be fought house to house, neighbour against neighbour, block to block, town against town, English against English, American against American, German against German.

But it’s a good way off yet. It’s not a war that’s going to break out tomorrow, or even next year. But in maybe 10 or 15 years. Maybe sooner if the economic downturn turns into full scale depression. But eventually it’ll come to a head.

Democracy in the western world is breaking down. The imposition of smoking bans is just one example of that breakdown. Politicians no longer represent people, but instead represent rich and powerful industries and lobby groups. There’s no real debate about anything. The debate is always over. The media has become trivialised. The real decisions are all taken behind closed doors, out of sight, and beyond scrutiny. In Europe, people are having an EU superstate imposed upon them whether they want it or not. And they’re having smoking bans imposed upon them too. And they’re having environmental restrictions, and unlimited numbers of meddling regulations, imposed as well. Resentment and anger is growing everywhere.

The civil war will be fought by environmentalist, healthist, Big-State ‘progressives’ against a loose coalition of conservatives and libertarians and religious groups. It’ll be Right versus Left, and country against town. In Europe it will be the people against the ‘progressive’ EU superstate.

There’ll be some spark that ignites it. It’ll start when somebody – somebody who has had enough – walks into somewhere like the offices of the management of the Lakes at Pointe West and shoots dead everyone inside it. And from there it’ll spread in all directions, everywhere, and engulf everyone. There won’t be a damn thing the military or the police or anybody else can do to stop it.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen civil war looming on the horizon. Coming up on 3 years ago, when I started my blog, it was already in mind. And it’s because the so-called ‘progressives’ are so completely uncompromising, and are always pushing for more and more. It would have been quite easy to have a partial smoking ban, but the antismokers wouldn’t have it. And now they’re pushing for further bans. It’s the same with the EU. It’s always pushing to get bigger, and to exercise more and more control. It’s all one way. People may retreat in the beginning in the face of such a thing. But they won’t retreat forever. Resistance will mount. Matters will come to a head.

Update: Rose reports that Jane O’Grady was admitted to hospital last weekend.

Why? Because I don’t want to petition anybody for anything any more. I don’t want to go cap-in-hand to the government, tugging my forelock, and saying, “Please sir, can we have our pubs back?” only for them to say “No.”

This bloody government is supposed to be representing the British people. It’s not their job to tell us what to do. It’s our job to tell them what to do. Their job is to listen when we tell them what we want, what we expect, and what we demand.

In this spirit, I’m not going to sign any more petitions. Instead I’m going to tell these cunts what they must do.

During a TV debate with a Greek Socialist MEP this morning, I suggested that Greece wouldn’t begin to recover until it decoupled, defaulted and devalued. The two biggest sectors of the Greek economy, I said, were shipping and tourism. Both could benefit hugely from a competitive devaluation.

The PASOK man stared at me in horror. But this wasn’t about the economics, he spluttered. It was about the European ideal. Surely –surely – it would be unthinkable for the EU to go ahead without the country where democracy was born. That would be a calamity for Greece and for Europe!

No, I felt like saying, it would be a calamity for you personally. As an MEP, you are far better off than you were as a Greek minister. With your party now at eight per cent in the opinion polls, you have no obvious route back to national politics.

Perhaps this exchange summarizes the division between the people and the politicians in Europe. What’s good for the politicians isn’t good for the people. The European political class has been seduced by European money and power and prestige, and by the glittering career prospects it opened to them. In their own countries, the best they could expect is to become a mere national president or prime minister of Hicksville, while in the EU they could dream of becoming Emperor-President of All Europe.

But the European Project is now showing every sign of having been a collective delusion, a sort of political acid trip, from which the participants are now coming down. The flashbacks will probably last for decades. Peter Oborne:

For all of my adult life, support for the European Union has been seen as the mark of a civilised, reasonable and above all compassionate politician. It has guaranteed him or her access to leader columns, TV studios, lavish expense accounts and overseas trips.

The reason for this special treatment is that the British establishment has tended to view the EU as perhaps a little incompetent and corrupt, but certainly benign and generally a force for good in a troubled world. This attitude is becoming harder and harder to sustain, as this partnership of nations is suddenly starting to look very nasty indeed: a brutal oppressor that is scornful of democracy, national identity and the livelihoods of ordinary people.

Reading this, it occurred to me that not very long ago I also regarded the WHO and the medical establishment as equally benign, civilised, and compassionate. What else is medicine but compassion? But, just like the EU (and perhaps because of it), the medical establishment has turned into something brutal and oppressive, as it has set out to make people quit smoking.

One of the basic truths of politics is that the Left is far more oblivious to human suffering than the Right. The Left always speaks the language of compassion, but rarely means it. It favours ends over means. The crushing of Greece, and the bankruptcy of her citizens, is of little consequence if it serves the greater good of monetary union.

It’s the same with smoking as with the European Union. The utopian goal is a ‘smoke-free society’, and nothing can be allowed to stand in its way. The destruction of communities and friendships is of little consequence if it serves the greater smoke-free good.

In the comments earlier today, Jax wrote that smoking bans had kicked off the economic slowdown. I was making a similar point a few months back in The Unhappy Shopper. But I’ve never been entirely convinced that smoking bans actually started the slowdown. But the argument isn’t a new one. It was used during US Prohibition (see right).

In our own tobacco prohibition era, ASH’s Deborah Arnott denies that smoking bans cut spending and reduce tax revenues.

DA: ”People pay tax on different things. If you’re not spending the money on cigarettes, which just goes up in smoke, you’ll spend the money on other things.”

Do people really ”spend the money on other things”? I certainly haven’t been. I can’t really think of any spending of mine that has increased since the smoking ban to compensate for the decrease in the money I spend in cafes and pubs and restaurants.

I now spend most of my time at home. And much of that time is spent online, or reading library books, or writing computer programmes, or thinking – and I don’t spend much money doing these things. I only make brief forays outdoors, and then mostly to just buy food. After all, for smokers it’s become a hostile, forbidding world out there. We’re not welcome. So I’ve been saving on petrol, and on shoe leather, and on clothes. And taxi and train fares. And also on the cakes and chocolates and books and magazines that I once used to buy on impulse.

There’s also been a cultural withdrawal on my part. I no longer buy any newspapers. And I no longer watch TV (and so pay no TV licence). I’ve been to see just one movie in the past five years. It’s become their culture. It’s not my culture any more. It’s not even my country any more. It’s been taken over by a bunch of Nazis, most of whom are as unelected as Deborah Arnott.

And, while I’m smoking pretty much as much as I ever did, quite a lot of the money I spend on it has gone abroad – either on black market tobacco, or on stuff that I’ve bought abroad (e.g. Spain) -. So while I continue to spend money on tobacco, a lot of it isn’t going into the UK economy.

The main point is that I’m not “spending money on other things”. Nor am I likely to start spending any time soon.  For even if I had a sudden windfall of cash, what the hell would I spend it on?

Here’s Rose’s comment:

It occured to me that I haven’t needed to use a taxi since July 2007.

I haven’t bought a dress to go out for the evening, because I haven’t needed one.

Nor bought a lipstick.

I found a receipt from my favourite hotel dated from April 2007, it was the last time I stayed there for the weekend.

I don’t vist teashops any more, I buy something from the bakery and take it home.

And Lou’s comment:

It’s not smokers alone. Most have family, almost all have friends – and they feature in this too. At least the sensitive ones do in my experience. Now, when I visit, it’s a case of something knocked up at home, or a takeaway, whereas previously it would have been the works and possibly a second coffee and several fags in a restaurant.

These are just one day’s comments on my blog. A few days back Leg-iron was saying the same:

I haven’t been inside a cinema or a restaurant since the ban came in and soon stopped using cafes too. It’s not relaxing to be made unwelcome, so why on Earth would I pay extra for it? I drink my tea and coffee at home too, and bought an espresso machine a few years back as a direct result of the smoking ban. It’s a Gaggia Cubika and it’s excellent.

In fact, it’s rather hard to imagine what else banned smokers might spend their money on. Is it really likely that they’d say, “No worries, I’ll just take up scuba diving instead”? Or, “Now’s my chance to build up a great stamp collection”? The mere fact that people have money in their pockets doesn’t mean they’re going to spend it – particularly when there is no longer much for them to spend it on.

The message is the same from all four: We’ve Stopped Spending. And when people like us stop spending, other people stop earning. And that means that business everywhere becomes depressed, and companies go bust, and people lose their jobs.

And when it’s about a quarter of the population that stops spending – stops buying drinks in pubs, or coffee in cafes, or meals in restaurants, that is bound to have an impact on the whole economy. When I lived in Devon, before the ban I used to buy just one pint of lager at the River every day, and occasionally two. Back then it cost about £2.50 a pint. So that’s easily £1000 per year. Add on everything else I stopped spending (restaurant food, teas, coffees, newspapers, etc), and it’s probably £2000 a year I stopped spending. If Britain’s 13 million smokers also stopped spending that amount, it adds up to £26 billion per annum. In 2009 the UK hospitality industry added some £33 billion in gross value to the UK economy total of £860 billion GVA (see also). “Gross value added” is the difference between the sale price and the production cost of a product. So if Britain’s smokers stopped buying a pint of lager and a pasty and chips (or their equivalent) every day, that’s about 3% of the UK economy gone missing. And not all of it would be lost in the hospitality sector.

So what does it take to cause a recession?

Athens 12 Feb 2012

Matters may be coming to a head. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph:

It is clear that Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble wishes to expel Greece from the euro, calculating that Euroland is now strong enough to withstand contagion, and that the European Central Bank’s `Draghi bazooka’ for lenders has eliminated the risk of a financial collapse.

“We can’t keep sinking billions into a bottomless pit,” he said on Friday.

and

By demanding a budget viceroy for Greece, and now an escrow account to seize Greek revenues at source, the Merkel-Schäuble government has crossed a diplomatic line and brutalised EU politics.

Elsewhere in the Telegraph, it’s reported that Greek party leaders have been required to make a written commitment to fully implement the Greek austerity package regardless of who wins the elections in April.

Beyond everything else, this is the central dilemma the eurozone faces: necessary economic reforms are constantly pitted against basic democratic principles.

The demand for a written assurance to stick to the austerity plan in Greece is only one in a series of direct assaults on democracy, accountability and transparency that have followed in the wake of the eurozone crisis,…

The article cites the installation of unelected technocratic regimes in Greece and Italy, veto powers over the budgets of poorer eurozone states, central banks dictating economic policy, secrecy, and lack of transparency.

And if that’s just in Europe, then it doesn’t seem that banks aren’t very much better in China either. (See also the Slog)

There is probably nothing to worry about here. Just the second-largest economy in the world with about one-quarter of the world’s population demanding that banks roll over $1.7 trillion in loans made to local governments during a building spree.

…I don’t mean to alarm anyone — truly I don’t — but what happens to the United States if we have recessions in both Europe and China this year?

If much the same has been happening in Europe, the USA, and China, with banks everywhere massively over-lending, then it’s a global bust that’s looming. And soon enough pretty much everywhere is likely to be looking like Greece, as people lose their jobs and their homes. Perhaps that’s why democracy is vanishing. There’ll be a state of emergency everywhere. And then what?

Update: The Slog: GREEK DEBT DRAMA: MERKEL ‘READY TO ENGINEER DEFAULT’ SAY SOURCES.