I’m getting sick to death of stuff like this. Someone in Australia is saying that Australians shouldn’t be treated like children, and doesn’t like smoking bans. Nothing wrong with that. But then he goes on to say:
“Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. We have the knowledge. As adults, we can make up our own minds.”
Well, I for one don’t “know” any such thing. And whatever it is, it isn’t “knowledge”. If anything, it’s indoctrination. People have been told for so long that smoking is bad for them that they’re actually incapable of thinking anything else – as I found out about 10 years ago when I started questioning what I “knew” about tobacco.
My position now is that I don’t believe anything anyone has ever said against tobacco. I don’t believe the doctors and the experts and the pundits. Furthermore I don’t see why I should believe them. I’m sick of all these experts.
Also I think I should actively disbelieve people who are doing so much harm to smokers. I should reject their claims out of hand. Back in the Nazi era, the terrible treatment of Jews should have been sufficient for anyone to reject the Nazi racial “science” that supposedly justified it, without reading a single word of it. Same with smoking. The treatment of smokers isn’t yet anywhere near as appalling as the Nazi treatment of Jews, but it’s bad enough already for anyone to completely reject the “science” being used to justify it. There can be no possible justification for demonising, excluding, firing, evicting, and otherwise harassing an entire sector of society. It’s a disgusting thing to do. The fact that, in a supposedly civilised society, an eugenic social programme to rid the world of smokers has been – and is still being – advanced in slow incremental steps, doesn’t make it any less disgusting: it makes it more disgusting.
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In other news, we Britons acquired a new Prime Minister today. She emailed me herself to tell me. She wrote:
“The Government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few, but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives. When we take the big calls, we’ll think not of the powerful but you. When we pass new laws, we’ll listen not to the mighty but to you. When it comes to taxes, we’ll prioritise not the wealthy but you.”
Well, if you’re going to give us more control over our lives, you can start by repealing the smoking ban, and leaving it to pub landlords to decide what they will or won’t permit their customers to do. And if you’re going to stop listening to the powerful, you can stop listening to the likes of ASH and Deborah Arnott. And instead of raising taxes on tobacco year after year, how about cutting the already punitive level of taxation on tobacco.
Frank Davis 
I have nothing to add you covered it all!
I live in hope but sadly not too much.
I think there is one respect in which tobacco is bad for health. I’m prepared to take this largely on trust from someone who is probably the foremost world authority on tobacco.
I refer of course to Rose’s warning about the dangers of green tobacco sickness from handling large quantities of raw tobacco leaves barehanded.
I’d also add a request that the Government stop funding ASH and all other such lobbying agencies that pose as charities. And instead get the Crown Prosecution Service to liase with Frank (and others) with a view to prosecuting these vile charlatans.
Not just bare hands, Tony, but wet tobacco leaves that soak through your clothes and into your skin.
“Green Tobacco Sickness occurs when tobacco workers hand-harvest, cut, or load tobacco plants, usually in the early morning or after a rainfall when tobacco plants are covered with moisture.
GTS occurs through skin exposure to dissolved nicotine from tobacco leaves.
Symptoms of GTS include weakness, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, abdominal cramps, breathing difficulty, abnormal temperature, pallor, diarrhoea, chills, fluctuations in blood pressure or heart rate, and increased perspiration and salivation.
The onset of the illness is three to 17 hours after exposure and the duration of illness is one to three days.Initial treatment includes cessation of work, change of clothing, showering, fluid intake, and rest. In more extreme cases, intravenous rehydration, anti-emetics, and dimenhydrinate are administered.”
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1763894/
It gave Jarvik and Rose the idea for nicotine patches because anti-tobacco can’t tell the difference between a live, fully functioning, green tobacco leaf and an aged, cured (turning a summer leaf into an autumn one) leaf that has been dried and set fire to.
It would unwise to risk one of them making you a salad.
Thanks for clarifying Rose. I rather suspect that as more people start to grow their own, your advice might save more sickness and even death than the anti-smokers have managed during their entire, very dark, 400 year history.
I, too, heard that little snippet from Mrs May’s speech and allowed a teeny-tiny little ray of hope to sneak into my thoughts. Not that I’m pinning a huge amount of hope on this just yet. I’ve long got used to silently adding to myself, whenever I hear the words “for everyone” or “for all our customers/clients/constituents/members of the community etc” – whether uttered by a politician, in an advert trying to flog me something, or anywhere else – the words “except for smokers.” Because, even if it’s not actually said, it so often turns out to be the case that those words have simply been conveniently omitted. So, for me these days, it’s actions, not words, which convince me of any person or organisation’s real intentions.
But, hey, let’s not be negative. I also remember hearing Mrs May talking during the leadership contest about the “burning inequalities” which needed addressing by a new Government. Freudian? I’d like to think so, being as the only legitimised (indeed, State-funded) inequality these days is that currently being forced upon smokers …
I replied to the email from Theresa May using the last paragraph in my post above. But I suspect that nobody reads replies to bulletins from bulletin@mail.conservatives.com. It’s almost certainly a one-way messaging system: They send you emails, but don’t read the replies.
People have been told for so long that smoking is bad for them that they’re actually incapable of thinking anything else
The people in question would include most “scientists”, whose conspicuous silence allowed the deluge of misinformation about so-called smoking hazards to go on for nigh on 7 decades.
leaving it to pub landlords to decide what they will or won’t permit their customers to do.
Legally speaking, should it be up to the pub landlords to decide whether their patrons ought to not wear bow-ties or striped trousers, or to abstain from smoking?
They are the proprietors of the pubs, so they should make the rules. Who wants people with bow ties and striped trousers in their pub? Or blue shoes?
Hey, just a minute! My favourite shoes are dark blue suede sneakers! :)
“Legally speaking, should it be up to the pub landlords to decide whether their patrons ought to not wear bow-ties or striped trousers, or to abstain from smoking?”
Yep. See signs on the doors of pubs that say “Smart dress only; no sportswear.”
Pubs are private spaces – in spite of the misleading and misused term ‘public’ house – and what the proprietor says goes. Some even expect a certain level of conduct! All very old fashioned and non-progressive.
On a similar note, two other glaring examples are:
Private members clubs, not only are they restricted to members only but the premises are, for the most part, owned by the members. Very few are leased.
And tobacconists. As the name jolly well suggests, they’re places that are only of interest to people who use tobacco.
You should spread that last part around to get lots of Emails to the politicos and maybe some letters to editors published!
I’ve sent it in reply to Theresa May’s email to me last night.
Anytime someone says, “everyone knows” or something else implying their vast knowledge, the rest is bound to be nonsense.
What they are actually saying is that anyone that is as smart as they are believes something like what they believe.
As for politicians promises, history has shown most of them to be the babble of the demented.
Their words mean what they want them to mean.
Only one politician, US President Truman, has said something that I think rings true.
He kept a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here”, implying his total responsibility for what happens and he seemed to mean just that.
Reblogged this on Contra la ley "antitabaco".
you tell her frank. Smoking should be allowed in pubs
OT
Frank
Do you remember in our Hill Fort designing period in 2010, there was some dispute over how the smoke got out of the roof of a roundhouse?
Sadly this isn’t it
Building Hill Forts
7 Aug 2010
“A typical roundhouse would have been 30 feet or 9 metres in diameter. That’s an area of 63 square metres. Packed together in a hexagonal grid pattern, each roundhouse would have occupied a hexagon 70 square metres in area.”
Well, archaeology has finally solved it.
“Other unique finds include the largest, best-preserved bronze age oak wheel ever found, woven linen finer than the lightest of today’s fabrics, an old sword cut down into a useful kitchen knife, glass and amber beads imported from the continent and the Middle East, and the five round huts themselves, from the wicker floors to the clay chimneys – not just crude smoke holes – in the thatched roofs, still lying where they collapsed 3,000 years ago.”
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/jul/14/uks-best-bronze-age-site-must-farm-dig-ends-analyis-continue-years
Clay chimney pots on thatched roofs 3,000 years ago, who’d have thought it?
That’s interesting. Clay chimneys or clay chimney pots? If the latter, would they have been held up by the thatched roof?
That’s what I was wondering, but if you just mixed the clay into the thatch to form a chimney pot, surely it would just wash away, the heat from the fire below being insufficient to fire it properly. Clay chimney pot, with the thatch built up around it?
There is a diagram, the clay is built up inside the roof and protected by turf.
“Simplified illustration of a typical house at the Must farm settlement. The posts supporting the buildings were very substantial, driven up to three metres into the sediments. The roof is made from a combination of thatch and turf with clay around the chimney.”
https://inews.co.uk/essentials/news/uk/britains-pompeii-perfectly-preserved-bronze-age-settlement-lifting-lid-3000-years-history/
Another little bit of good news. Apparently May’s cabinet is now complete and there’s no job for either Wollaston or Soubry. The only downside is that Jeremy Hunt is still in place.
It gets better:
The newspaper The Independent” calls this a “…plain stupid’ and ‘deeply worrying’ move“, see below:
The decision to abolish the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been variously condemned as “plain stupid”, “deeply worrying” and “terrible” by politicians, campaigners and experts.
One of Theresa May’s first acts as Prime Minister was to move responsibility for climate change to a new Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy.
Wonderful stuff!
Agreed. She’s done a darned fine splendid job of detoxifying government heads.
Now let’s see if she continues with this business of 0.7% of our national income being given away to corrupt, inept governments in the name of “overseas aid”. It was a Cameron / Osborne favourite – and she’s shown she’s sick fed up with virtually every single one of his little pets.
And can she, or her new chancellor, please pull the plug on that f…wit they have as the chief honcho in the Bank of England.
He has single handedly trashed the value of our currency and seemed intent on doing more damage with his threat of reducing interest rates today. The fact he didn’t is why I already have some respect for Mr. Hammond.
That boy is not going to leave the UK with one single plaudit. Damn his eyes.
“Everybody knows that smoking is bad for you. We have the knowledge. As adults, we can make up our own minds.”
Simon Clark more or less uses this this argument – akin to fighting with one arm behind your back or a general negotiating terms of surrender after being captured or even before the battle starts.