As more senior Tories call for Britain to leave the EU, European Commission president Manuel Barroso took the opposite view:
“We must remember that the present configuration of the euro area is only temporary, since all member states but two [the UK and Denmark, which have opt-outs] are destined to become full members of the Economic and Monetary Union under the Treaties.”
Mr Barroso insists EU political union is inevitable… (my emphases)
‘Inevitable’. ‘Destiny’. Last year he was also saying that the euro was ‘irreversible’.
It’s utter nonsense of course. Nothing is inevitable. But much of politics seems to revolve around the attempt to create a universal, pervasive illusion of unstoppable momentum in one direction or other.
And certainly the EU project of ‘ever closer union’ has acquired considerable momentum over the last 50 years. The EU has become a political fact of life for many people. It’s become not only the way things are going, but also the way things actually are.
Nevertheless, it’s very likely that the considerable momentum of the European train is now ensuring that the derailment of the euro will make the resulting crash far worse than it would otherwise have been, as politicians and pundits find themselves unable to break with the habits and assumptions of a lifetime. For many of them, the demise of the EU is quite literally unthinkable, and they will carry on as if everything was on track, even as it all flies apart around them.
Much the same applies with smoking bans. These are presented as different forms of unstoppable and inevitable progress, much like the EU project. And once enough people can be got to believe that ‘there’s no stopping it’, and ‘nothing can be done’, and ‘it’s the way things are going’ in ‘the march of history’, the less resistance will be mounted. What better way is there to defeat an enemy than to convince him that resistance is useless, and that he may as well surrender without firing a shot?
And certainly the war on smoking has acquired a momentum much like that of the EU project, in the same slow, painstaking way. And it meant that, in the UK at least, most smokers were resigned to the inevitability and irrreversibility of the 2007 smoking ban. Nothing could be done about it. It was pointless to even try. There was no stopping it.
I encountered such sentiments frequently back in 2007. And yet the UK smoking ban is no more irreversible than the euro, or anything else. And much like the EU has become a “disaster” (as Michael Portillo put it), so also the smoking ban is proving to have been a disaster as well, in terms of a fractured society and a stalled economy as smokers have stayed home and stopped spending, as the recently completed ISIS survey of smokers has demonstrated.
Nevertheless, such has been the growing momentum of the antismoking campaign over the past half century that it has become unthinkable for many people to even begin to consider trying to reverse it. To such people it seems pointless to even try. It’s the way things have been going for a long, long time, and the way that they will inevitably continue.
It is perhaps one reason why the Labour government capitulated before the unstoppable power of the medical profession, when it demanded not just that smoking be banned in pubs that sold food, but in all pubs. What was the point of resisting, if the battle was lost, and that was the way things were going? They might as well get it over and done with now. And so they did.
And once the antismoking campaign had gained unstoppable momentum, it could make the wildest claims (e.g. secondhand and thirdhand smoke) without anyone voicing dissent. And the antismokers could also become more and more openly contemptuous of smokers, again without a murmur of disagreement. They’d won, and theirs were the victors’ spoils of war. Nobody dared question them.
And yet, the practical results of the UK smoking ban has been little or no reduction in the prevalence of smoking. Smoking has not been ‘denormalised’. And there has been little or no improvement in public health (all the trumpeted ‘miracles’ being the result of blatant cherry-picking of data). And large sections of the hospitality industry have been bankrupted. And, already mentioned, there is social fragmentation and economic slump. All of which are set to only get deeper and deeper.
In short: it hasn’t worked.
Much like the misdesigned euro single currency, smoking bans are gradually proving to be disastrous. And there comes a time, when the supposedly unstoppable train of progress lies belly up in a field, its wheels uselessly spinning, that people will gradually start to notice that the unstoppable has been stopped, and no further progress can be made in the former direction. And when this realisation dawns, it will become a matter of urgency to call in ambulances and the fire brigade and even the army to free the millions (and they are numbered in millions) of trapped victims of a failed social experiment, as the illusion of inevitability and irreversibility wear off.
Frank Davis 
Let us quicken their ultimate fate at every turn! ATTACK,ATTACK,ATTACK!
Yes I do indeed hate them more than anyone else…………..I eat and sleep destroying them!
Once upon a time there was something “unsinkable”, too.
Another story against the bans in the nazi rabid indy paper of all places
Ball State smoking ban is latest nanny state attack on freedom, personal choice
There is no shortage of petty hall monitors, arrogant bureaucrats and paternalistic politicians who know what is good for us, will threaten us into compliance with their lifestyle choices, and discipline us into shutting up if we feel differently.
Ball State University is the latest institution to participate in the finger wagging of the nanny state elite. The trustees recently announced that students and employees of the college will no longer have the right to consume legal tobacco products on campus grounds. Smoking is permitted only in automobiles with all windows rolled up. Any adult who breaks the seal and allows the slightest streak of smoke to waft into the open air will face a $50 fine.
Ball State was already subject to the state-wide smoking ban that the Indiana government passed in 2012. With the exceptions of stand-alone taverns, commercial casinos and tobacco shops, every public building – publicly or privately owned – must prohibit smoking. Lamenting the dangers of second hand smoke has become one of the doctrinal demands of the politically correct and socially inept.
The most often cited study that supposedly “proves” the harmful impact of second hand smoke was conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1992. The always meddling and burdensome EPA concluded that environmental smoke causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year. Since the release of the report, local and state governments, along with many private institutions, have treated smokers like criminals and have reacted to the striking of a match with the swift and severe disapproval normally reserved for acts of animal cruelty.
Hysterical bureaucrats might be surprised to discover that a congressional inquiry into the EPA study on second hand smoke determined that “the Agency had abused and manipulated scientific data in order to reach a politically motivated result.” A federal judge, after reviewing the study for a lawsuit involving environmental smoke, levied a similar indictment, saying, “The EPA committed to a conclusion before their research had begun.”
A study of credibility and integrity, conducted by scientists at UCLA and the State University of New York in Stony Brook, found that non-smoking spouses of heavy smokers, after 30 years of daily exposure to environmental smoke, had no heightened lung cancer risk. Facts, logic and self-evident truth are burned up and tossed at the curb like a cigarette butt in the discussion over smoking bans. Even if second hand smoke resembled the poison that its detractors use to manipulate people with fear, there is a larger philosophical precedent at stake that should worry even the most dedicated anti-smoking babysitters.
The trustees of Ball State essentially run the institution, and therefore, have the right to enact whatever policies they feel appropriate for the campus. Restaurant owners in Indiana, however, just like restaurant and bar owners in the 28 states that impose smoking bans on their citizens, no longer have the ability to exercise that same right of liberty and private property.
Three of the values that made America a uniquely livable country for such a long period in history were freedom, independence and a leave us alone philosophy of governance. In an era of expanding state power, small and large threats to liberty emerge under the “we know what’s good for you” banner of lofty rhetoric and liberal Puritanism.
Smoking is no longer allowed in the overwhelming majority of businesses in Indiana. Mayor Michael Bloomberg in New York City, who infamously attempted to ban the sale of sodas larger than 16 ounces, recently announced plans to prohibit bodegas from displaying cigarettes behind the counter. In Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has mandated that all public buildings sell only “healthy snacks” in their vending machines, and has promised to widen the mandate to private buildings. Many cities and counties across America have outlawed restaurant owners from using trans-fats in their food products, and the cities of Las Vegas and Orlando have criminalized feeding the homeless outdoors.
On the federal level, there are so called “common sense” initiatives to infringe upon the rights of gun owners and buyers to exercise the Second Amendment. Smoking regulations, which began as separated sections and have mutated into state-wide bans, demonstrate the veracity of the “slippery slope” cliché. In the case of firearm, tobacco, and dietary restrictions, who has the privilege of defining and deciding “common sense”?
Self-appointed school masters satisfy their puny visions of grandeur by interfering in the lives of tax paying, free thinking adults, and believe those adults are too stupid to determine their own priorities and preferences. The lifestyle of the enlightened elite is, apparently, so superior to that of the unwashed masses that they force conformity under penalty of taxation, ticketing, or imprisonment. As an adult, I would rather have the ability to choose what I put in my body, and suffer the consequences if I make bad decisions. That is called responsibility, and any society that elevates personal responsibility to a place of prominence, must also believe in its intellectual companions: freedom and personal choice.
Freedom and personal choice are novel concepts in the shadow cast by an obese nanny state, but let those who still believe celebrate with a favorite drink and, if they choose, a cigarette and a doughnut.
http://www.indystar.com/article/20130509/OPINION03/305090082/Ball-State-smoking-ban-latest-nanny-state-attack-freedom-personal-choice
Well-written and unvarnished truth, good for David Masciotra. Harley, you’ve unearthed a multitude of good thinkers I’d have overlooked via your comments and links. This guy is bookmark material, the kind of countrymen we need more of. We need less of Obama and his band of Miserables. The speech he made the other day once again pimping Big Nanny Government was pathetic. He wants to tax smokers to pay for free, early progressive indoctrination so we can have another generation of wrong-headed, brain dead hypochondriacs. No way in hell is he going to get away with that. Over my dead body.
Because of a grueling, complex construction project during which summer decided to start in late April, my Idle Time has been reduced to zero and I’ve been too tired to read and write much. When you’re dog-tired, the keyboard just fights you for every letter.
The job is now complete and the mouth from the south of California will resume with his usual chin music.
It’s nice to be back at Frank’s online pub. And to have some invaluable Idle Time back.
Excellent and well researched article, under which I notice that there is one single comment at the moment.
“Is the author seriously suggesting that secondhand smoke is not harmful? Calling the design of one study into question does not nullify the conclusions of other extensive research. The author is certainly entitled to his opinion (a smoking ban is an overreach of government), but not his own set of facts. The evidence that secondhand smoke is dangerous is just overwhelming. ”
I should be fascinated to know which of the many common plant chemicals in a tobacco leaf he thinks is the dangerous one in such minute quantities.
Rose, I get this type of response all the time when I comment on various reports around the globe. It doesn’t matter how many links I give to studies saying SHS is harmless, nor how many examples of statistical skulduggery, their belief is unshakeable. The brainwashing process has been so comprehensive that not even Jesus Christ would be able to change their minds. Not even God himself could persuade them otherwise. SHS is deadly. The slightest whiff assures a fatal dose of cancer-inducing carcinogens. Experts have said. That’s it – conversation closed.
I honestly despair, sometimes. I want to physically shake them and tell them to use a little common sense. Ye gods, it’s bleedin’ obvious that it doesn’t add up. The evidence is there, writ large in the alive and kicking global population that SHS is obviously a con. But they believe. And that’s all there is to it.
nisakiman, my first mistake on entering this fray was to believe this was about science and an honest quest for the truth.
Far be it from me, a humble gardener to point out that the same things that were in tobacco were in the foods we eat everyday just in smaller amounts, to such august company as these doctors and scientists, but I felt something had gone terribly wrong and we couldn’t possibly be subjecting non-smokers to something they didn’t otherwise encounter.
It turned out that they had neither known nor cared until 1993 when it was pointed out to them and then they were only interested in defending their position.
As you say,when you go up against a religion whose “signs and wonders” have been provided by scientists through the years, to question it in anyway becomes blatant heresy to the true believer.
Anyway, no one likes think that they might have been conned.
It’s not just us though.
2003
“The demise of a supposed major risk to public health might be expected to prompt celebration among medical experts and campaigners. Instead, they scrambled to condemn the study, its authors, its conclusions, and the journal that published them. The reaction came as no surprise to those who have tried to uncover the facts about passive smoking. More than any other health debate, the question of whether smokers kill others as well as themselves is engulfed in a smog of political correctness and dubious science.
Researchers who dissent from the party line face character assassination and the termination of grants. Those who report their findings are vilified as lackeys of the tobacco industry, and accused of professional misconduct (in 1998, campaigners tried to have this newspaper censured by the Press Complaints Commission for our reports on passive smoking. They failed.).”
“As The Telegraph has discovered, however, passive smoking research is an area where the usual standards do not apply. If they did, last week’s wholly negative findings would have surprised no one.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4769409/Warning-the-health-police-can-seriously-addle-your-brain.html
What they probably didn’t know when this article was published was the WHO had gone into partnership with the makers of cessation drugs in 1999 and the FCTC was already underway.
Anyway you look at it the media is turning on the nazis and in some case it was the most supportive media outlets of the bans turning on them!
That was to be expected Harley. The press is its own animal, they’ll support whatever side, faction, or wind direction that will sell their copy. It’s like what they do to celebrities, the press builds famous people up only so they can eventually tear them down again.
Anti-smoking factions are no different than celebrities, in the eyes of the newspapers – for them it’s just a long-term guarantee of keeping up circulation, a handy form of tool. The press can also count on not having any accountability later – they can always simply say “we were lied to”, and they do. It works every time.
A woman friend called to tell me that a NY Times article reporting on a self-described hip gala at the Met Museum a few nights ago had mentioned that there was a notable amount of smoking going on, tho it wasn’t sure if the smokers waited till Bloomberg (one of the guests) was gone. It was apparently the kind of evening attended by a gamut from Madonna to, well, Bloomberg. Funnily, however, the online version of the story deleted the smoking, but apparently not all the mayors horses or (alleged) men have been able to delete actual smoking
Madonna and Bloomberg, ugh. They deserve one another. I can’t imagine two more unaware cretinous bores than those two.
I normally refrain from blowing smoke at anyone but I would make a point out of clouding either of them in a noxious plume.
Blowing off steam in the public forum sure feels good again. Kind of like a smoke after a two hour enforced interruption.
I can’t imagine a ‘hip gala’ at which Bloomberg was present. Or Madonna for that matter. I’ve got a video somewhere of Madonna berating a crowd at one of her concerts for smoking.
The laws will never be repealed, they will just become ignored.
That will happen once the squealers are out of state sponsored work, and that is looking more likely by the week.
That was said before! However it changed rather rapidly…………
Heres a time line starting in 1900,dont be surprised to see the same thing playing out today nearly 100 years later.
1901: REGULATION: Strong anti-cigarette activity in 43 of the 45 states. “Only Wyoming and Louisiana had paid no attention to the cigarette controversy, while the other forty-three states either already had anti-cigarette laws on the books or were considering new or tougher anti-cigarette laws, or were the scenes of heavy anti- cigarette activity” (Dillow, 1981:10).
1904: New York: A judge sends a woman is sent to jail for 30 days for smoking in front of her children.
1904: New York City. A woman is arrested for smoking a cigarette in an automobile. “You can’t do that on Fifth Avenue,” the arresting officer says.
1907: Business owners are refusing to hire smokers. On August 8, the New York Times writes: “Business … is doing what all the anti-cigarette specialists could not do.”
1917: SMOKEFREE: Tobacco control laws have fallen, including smoking bans in numerous cities, and the states of Arkansas, Iowa, Idaho and Tennessee.
The last state to repeal was Utah in 1923
Nothing is inevitable. But much of politics seems to revolve around the attempt to create a universal, pervasive illusion of unstoppable momentum in one direction or other. […]
[…] And once the antismoking campaign had gained unstoppable momentum, it could make the wildest claims (e.g. secondhand and thirdhand smoke) without anyone voicing dissent.
An unstoppable momentum would imply a ‘perpetuum mobile’, something that, I believe, until now has not been achieved.
I also believe that the anti-smokers got a bit carried away when caught up in the momentum they expended much energy (“passive-smoking-being-dangerous”) into getting going. It was inevitable that “third-fourth-idiotic-hand-smoking-damage” would appear. Much to the dismay of anti-smokers there is a problem with that; everything, especially our cash is contaminated with THIRD-HAND-SMOKE. Surely they will not touch it? Worse even, [?fifth-hand-smoke damage] might cause the anti-smokers suffer from a panic attack when transferring miraculously appearing cash via the internet. Banks are contaminated with “fourth-hand-smoke” which in turn will contaminate anti-smokers’ lab tops and therefore the “health risk” these lab tops impose, means they would have to be thrown away. Not very environmentally friendly, is it?
Some momentum gathered kills itself.
I used to like the idea of a european community but I do resent what appeared. The “health bandwagon” rolls, creating more disgruntled citizen than ever existed. The latest I have heard is that now the “adrenaline-junkies” are under attack.
Looking forward to a world-wide dull existence? I shudder.
They over sold the Brooklyn Bridge…………….Some poor buyers were bound to get pissed off!
Something is truly going on read this quip from a aussie news story:
The doctors who treat cancer patients are very disappointed and frustrated that a world leader now seems to have stalled in implementation of what we regard as very progressive legislation,” he said.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/national/17093358/
Ban outdoor dining smoking: Vic doctors
These idiot so called doctors and I truly believe their nothing more than a bunch of TC folks lined up to be called cancer specialists or of such. Theyve left a lie so open and the hole so deep nobody will ever trust any medical professional again.
Hundreds of lives are at risk from second-hand smoke, not just from cancer but from the aggravation of emphysema and heart disease, Prof Ball says.
The Idiot Prof Ball wanders why the governments not listening to him!
If any of you have fought in Australia over the bans over the last several years you will notice most of these aussie media outlets have no comments sections at all!