I seem to have nothing to say these days. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because Trump is no longer in office, and Joe Biden is boring. Or maybe it’s the endless lockdowns and the endless Covid-19. Or maybe it’s just because it’s winter.
Just one thing I noticed:
Wokeness is enhanced awareness of social and political injustice and the determination to eradicate it.
Somehow this wokeness never extends to awareness of the injustices and exclusions faced by smokers all over the world. It’s a selective wokeness. It’s really no wokeness at all. It’s unwokeness.
Frank Davis 
Well said!
The CV19 panic mongering is a predictable consequence of placing so called public health above everything else.
We shall all surely live forever, although in some kind of obedient stasis, if we follow the arbitrary authoritarian diktats.
Controlling humans only controls humans, not invisible airborne virus particles (more evidence of the illusion of control, and the Dunning-Kruger effect).
Perhaps one result of CV19 is “writer’s block”, as like tobacco, it is often described as causing or contributing to every affliction of humanity.
This is all the result of allowing myopic mysophobic paternalist ideologues to inflict their neurotic fearful world view on the silent majority, whether we like it or not.
If these politicians want everything to open up without masks and restrictions then bring back smoking. Yes, back to normal. As it was for 400 years.
….and the public pay directly for their own traditional, rough and ready, anti-bacterial, anti-viral medicine, the real stuff, not the stuff that has been meddled with by anti tobacco over the years.
The Lessons from History: Scientists Ideas About How to Make Safer Cigarettes Can Severely Backfire
Thursday, May 07, 2009
https://web.archive.org/web/20140717064708/http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2009/05/lessons-from-history-scientists-ideas.html
Well he got it mostly right.
“Prior to 1970, the use of additives in tobacco products was prohibited without special permission from the Commissioners of Customs and Excise, under Section 176 of the Customs and Excise Act, 1952. This permission was given only within very strict limits and mainly in respect of flavourings in tobacco products other than cigarettes. The prohibition extended to the importation of tobacco products containing additives as well as a ban on the production of cigarettes with additives for export.”
“Some smokers find existing low and low to middle tar brands unsatisfying, but if those who smoked middle or middle to high tar cigarettes could switch to low tar brands whose acceptability was improved by additives, the dangers of smoking could be reduced.
The Committee recognises the potential value of using flavouring additives in this way.”
old.ash.org.uk/html/regulation/html/additives.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20130625021611/http://www.forces.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=363&t=2973
“There is more to life than the avoidance of death.” Lord Sumption.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/lord-sumption-warns-civil-disobedience-has-begun-amid-lockdown-lunacy
Thanks Frank.
Read watched and listened this afternoon.
Sent to a friend tonight, albeit this link.
https://unherd.com/2021/03/lord-sumption-civil-disobedience-has-begun/
I listened to this vid earlier but when I got to the bit where he advocates passive acceptance of the COV(ID) passport, I switched it off and did some digging…
‘The Supreme Court (Lord Mance, Lord Sumption and Lord Carnwath), on 11 April 2017, refused applications by British American Tobacco and Japan Tobacco International for permission to appeal against the Court of Appeal judgment in in R (British American Tobacco and others) v Secretary of State for Health [2016] EWCA Civ 1182.
‘This brings to an end long running litigation in which the tobacco industry sought to challenge the Standardised Packaging of Tobacco Products Regulations 2015, which make provision for the retail packaging of cigarettes and hand rolling tobacco to be standardised, substantially limiting the ability of tobacco companies to place branding on their products.’
https://www.monckton.com/supreme-court-stubs-big-tobaccos-judicial-review-uk-plain-packaging-laws/
It’s the lockdowns. I organise my time around looming deadlines – “Oh, I must finish that little job before I go shopping in town / visit my old friend X / go to that talk / view that exhibition”. – and I find myself ticking off my todo list more slowly. Tomorrow used to come, now it never does.
There’s plenty going on here in America. Authoritarian wokeness is quickly transforming the country, almost hour by hour.
https://twitter.com/RooBeeDoo1/status/1368579983522807809
Meet Madam Jeanne Louise Calment, who had the longest confirmed human lifespan: 122 years, 164 days. She quit smoking in her glorious 117, because of poor vision and she had to ask others to light up her fag.
https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=3692213730894375&set=gm.889792128502728
No time for wokeness when you’re sailing a high tech yacht up on hydrofoils.
If you’d like a glimpse of an Auckland harbour in fading summer, with mask-less folk in social closeness shown in cutaway shots, in luxury yachts and harbour side watching the big screen,
see today’s match between Italy & NZ.
Folks drinking and masklless on ground and on spectator boats, can enjoy the views !
Another two races tomorrow. Best of seven. That was the latest, a few hours ago.
These boats are getting up to nearly motorway speeds sometimes, fun to watch.
Enjoy a virtual summer
Bear with it, or scroll forward to the first race start, and and then later again to race two start.
So we’ve gone from 1-1 to 2-2, over 4 races.
The second most recent upload has great views, but tomorrow we have more races.
Astonishing technology in these boats, and the virtual eye software making the overlays, so a great screen experience.
Italy won the first race today, then NZ the second, so about equal so far.
Take a virtual summer trip, enjoy watching the racing views.
;=})
Frank
“I seem to have nothing to say these days.”
Then I suggest you go through your back catalogue, I’ve just found a marvellous and very informative article you wrote, while I was looking for half forgotten link on tobacco growing in the Cotswolds.
Did Tobacco Duties Help Trigger The English Civil War?
Posted on November 28, 2016 by Frank Davis
“I seem to be becoming immersed in Anglo-American history. The mention by Nisakiman that James I had increased the duty on tobacco by 4000% (in 1604) started me looking for more information.”
https://twitter.com/RooBeeDoo1/status/1370341254718918656