Dreams v Reality

Smoking Bans KILL businesses-FACT!

     Well I guess all good things come to an end folks and in my case I'm sad to say that the much anticipated cruise has come, been thoroughly enjoyed and now gone; a certain sadness prevails.      However, I had the opportunity to espy the smoking situation from several angles and can now state, without question, that the entire anti tobacco mob should be lined up against a wall and machine gunned as the poor 'Hyon's band' were in N Korea a couple of weeks ago. 

 

Shot to musical fame & then shot to death by a luntic!

     We docked in Madiera, where nobody sat inside any cafe or bistro, and horror of horrors (Arnott) non smokers sat amid smokers whilst enjoying a coffee or a lager - and nobody died!
     We moved onto La Palma, a quaint little place where tables were in abundance in the cobbled streets, and again, at those tables, sat smokers & non smokers alike. I watched as the dreaded SHS drifted lazily upwards, ignoring smoker & non smoker alike as it quickly disappeared from view. Nobody died there either! The only thing that could be smelled was the exhaust fumes from the busy street a few yards away.
     Our last stop was Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and a city that amplified all that is wrong with smoking bans. As we wandered around the small streets only yards from the main 'tourist square' I counted six (6) 'paraffin lamps' (tramps/homeless people) curled up in doorways, or behind telephone boxes, as they sheltered and slept. Well sun-tanned old women were plentiful as they sat or squatted, holding out paper cups for donations. Kids hopping about in front of you, begging, as you wandered through this misery of existence, "please mister, mister please mister", only yards from the main square. Unbelievable, truly unbelievable! Modern day europe, home of the giant 'family' that Bill Newton Dunn likes to tell me, home of the euro that is broken & home to poverty that is now rife in Portugal! Unemployment in the under 25's age group is nigh on 40% and most unlikely to decrease in view of the decline in the hospitality sector in the country. I managed to speak to one small, side street cafe owner who told me that if there was no 'pavement seating' there was little business and that people ignored the "direito de fumar estúpido" ("stupid smoking law") where ever & whenever they could as it was simply bad for business. He also told me how popular it was said the smoking ban was in our country (now I wonder where he got that crap from???) 
     Funny isn't it? Spain & Portugal's financial declines have both occurred since the implemantation of smoking bans-how weird is that!
     Two things struck me as mega important onboard the ship we sailed the seas, the Ventura, and both were to do with smoking/smokers. Firstly, the "Lido Deck" (much enclosed deck 15) was specified as the 'smoking deck', although people could smoke in the open air elsewhere if they so chose to do, and every table sported an ashtray - oh yes it did! The second thing was that the Captain ASKED smokers to use the ashtrays and NOT throw butts into the sea as:
a) they might fly back into the boat and cause a fire
b) they would endanger the environment (the sea & marine life)
     There was no gestapo type severity of voice, no high pitched, hysterical wailing about smoking, any effects of, or even any mention of fellow non-smoking passengers, just a couple of very pleasant requests. It was clearly noticeable that the majority of seafarers (non smokers) didn't give a hoot about people smoking within a couple of feet of their sun loungers either! P&O obviously value their smoking customers just as much as their non smoking customers - not surprising really as we all paid the same price for our cruise! And would you believe this? I checked the deck everytime I walked through the smoking area and not once did I espy a cigarette end on the floor - NOT A SINGLE ONE! To me this proves beyond reasonable doubt that when people are spoken to in a pleasant, reasonable fashion, they react much more favourable than when bawled at, bullied and despised - Arnott & Co please take note!
I spent time on deck reading Michael J McFadden's excellent Tobakko Nacht-The Endgame, an enthralling read indeed!

 

But the endgame for who is the question?

     The Americans have MJM and we Brits (well, those with any balls) have Christopher Snowdon (Velvet Glove, Iron Fist) who between them have exposed Tobacco Control as the greatest fraud of the modern era-and there are a growing number of MPs who are finally realising that sad truth! However, sadly, there are a number of MPs who refuse to believe the truth that the printed page tells them-an il Liberal un Democrat from the Bristol area springs to immediate mind! A complete ante tobacco fruitcake who cannot back up his arguments with cold, hard facts-what a surprise. To be as fervent as he is, it is only too easy to conclude that he must be in the pay of Big Pharma somewhere along the line - just as anyone who objects to all this ridiculous TC 'must' be in the pay of Big Tobacco-according to them!

   

                                                    After all, 'gongs' don't come cheaply!

     Nice picture of a pair of charlatans, one of whom no longer weilds any form of power in the health department as she well exceeded her powers by nipping off to Luxemburg to convey our governments sentiments when in actual fact the government had expressed no such sentiments! She is now just a puppet elsewhere in the government departmental restructuring..... and here is the news, once again read by Anna Soubry!

     Another joyous bit of news is that Ed Milliband has actually shown that 'he has a pair' and after reading my blog (here) [joke of course] has outed Fatty Ar (buckle)bbot from his 'front bench'-it was probably bowing under all that unhealthy weight methinks! So the exceedingly unhealthy 'shadow health' minister is no more and our news toting  'health minister' has also gone. perhaps the Ministry of unHealthy Lies has finally realised that they can no longer continue whilst fielding hypocrits & liars-wonders will never cease.

 

An exceedingly unhealthy example of an ex shadow Health Minister

     You see folks, fatty Abbot continues to beat the drum about harmless SHS whilst all the time , in and around her London constituency, Sharia Law is being  imposed despite the clear legal definitions this country employs. Now which is the more important in your minds?

     Lastly, talking of our legal enforcement, comes the most ridiculous story of anti smoking lunacy to have hit these shores-a caterpillar & a dummy hookah pipe! Debbie Schofield, 32, runs a florists shop in Blackburn, and florists shop often decorate their windows in order to entice more custom to the door. Our Debbie enticed a most unsavoury creature to her door as a nosy-parker EHO tried to tell her that her display model of Alice in Wonderland’s caterpillar was breaking anti-smoking laws.

 The council officer warned Ms Scholfield that the wooden caterpillar might be in breach of laws preventing employees from smoking in the workplace and said he should investigate further. (So are we to take it that this officious little twerp considered a dummy caterpillar an employee?)

 He also claimed the presence of a shisha pipe led him to believe Ms Schofield might be running an illegal shisha pipe ‘smoking den.’ (The man obviously has absolutely no brains at all, after all, who in this world would advertise shisha smoking to the whole world and not expect a visit from one of these idiotic little nomarks? And we, the taxpayers, are paying for eejits like this!)

Wonder of wonders-a shisha smoking caterpillar

The best is yet to come

He told me he’d come in to investigate because there had been a complaint that the shisha pipe was contravening UK smoking in the workplace regulations. I said, "But it’s a wooden caterpillar," and he said "yes, but it’s smoking" and I said "no, it’s not". (How the hell can anything/anyone be smoking when nothing is alight or lit? What a complete prat!)

     Firstly we have to find the absolute pillock that reported this totally inoffensive bit of window art and have him/her placed in the stocks and pelted with as rotten a vegetable matter as can be found.

     Then we need to have this idiot council 'officer' publicly flogged for total utter stupidity, for even thinking that the wooden 'dummy' could be smoking using a model hookah pipe that doesn't work! 
     Finally Councillor Jim Smith, (contact him here) executive member for environment, who has defended the council employee needs to hung, drawn & quartered simply for trying to defend this idiot! This is a truly remarkable act of stupidity and a film ought to be made from this: 

Dumb, Dumber and even Dumber!

I think I'll put a great big picture of Harold Wilson in my shop window, smoking the obligatory pipe of course, and advertise raincoats for sale! These people simply cannot differentiate between their dreamlike world and actual reality!

Old freddie boy wasn't far wrong was he!!!