Octabber has begun. Battle is joined. On the one side, the entire tax-funded apparatus of State led by the Puritan Horde, the Smoke Inquisition and in the front line, indoctrinated idiot drones. Not as many of them as they like to think.
On the other side, a bunch of folk who would really rather just be left alone to live their lives as they choose. People who never thought they would have to defend a simple lifestyle choice but who are now in a position where they must choose. Give in and live as instructed or fight for your chance to live your one and only life your own way.
The Ashtray Warriors are very different from the armchair warriors of modern parlance. First, we are not allowed to sit in armchairs, we have to huddle outside in the cold.
Second, we really are in a position where we are being attacked. This is no time to rant at the TV or rip up the newspapers. They really are coming for us and they mean business. We are no longer even safe in our own homes.
Some vapers, I know, will be chuckling at the smokers because there are still a few who believe they are on the side with the big guns. That’s okay. Stand with the other side but don’t expect sympathy when they stab you in the back.
I am not exactly A-1 for physical active service so won’t be manning smoky trenches anywhere. All I really have are words, but words can do more lasting damage than a bullet when carefully chosen and selectively fired.
This month cannot succeed, by the antismokers’ own logic. I have met true drug addicts, they are safe enough when you have nothing they can steal and no money they can beg but it’s best not to let them attach themselves to you. Not my choice for long-term company, that’s for sure. Anna Raccoon has a description that will save me time here.
Does anyone really believe that you can simply say to a heroin addict; “Just stop doing it for 28 days and you’ll be fine. That’s really all you have to do,” and expect any success at all? Of course not. Yet we have been told that all smokers are addicts and that nicotine is as addictive as hard drugs. Now we are told ‘all you have to do is stop for 28 days, it’s that easy’. Real addiction is not that easy.
This has to be a critical point in this battle. If, at the end of October, they claim success, then they are stating that smoking is not an addiction. It cannot be, if it is that easy to stop.
If they announce failure, the bean-counters are likely to be somewhat distressed at the waste of money. Either way, for the smokophobes, this is a major battle.
The funny part is, it doesn’t really matter whether we win it or lose it. The dopes haven’t realised that at the end of the month they must either admit that smoking is so non-addictive that it’s easy to stop, or that they have wasted a hell of a lot of tax money on a publicity stunt that could not possibly work.
I have cut up all of last year’s remaining tobacco crop and have some of this year’s following through Junican’s towel method (I tried T-shirts but they are too thin, it has to be towels so I picked up some cheapies at the pound shop). I think I can last at least through October without spending any money on tobacco. Sure, I could restrict myself to Man with a Van but that still puts money into the EU somewhere down the line, and he doesn’t have regular opening hours. Once in a while I’ve still had to clutch my wallet in agony at the tobacco counter, and if you don’t go there often you really notice the accelerating prices.
Maybe I can manage to roll my own Christmas cigar this year. That would be satisfying. Cigar attempts so far have not been great.
This month is the antis’ Big Push. They believe they will succeed. The drones will feel empowered to accost smokers wherever they find them. I will break with my usual habits and visit pubs so they can find me. I will also be charging up my Electrofags now I know they are scared of those too.
All I will have are words, delivered in a gentle monotone. No raging or shouting, just quiet explanation. When all they see are my eyes locked on theirs, they will feel their breath shortening and their chest tightening. They will feel an itch on their wrists (nothing to do with smoking, it’s just easy to induce) that I will tell them is third hand smoke soaking in through their skin. Their scalp will itch, their eyes will burn, most will even find lumps if they place their fingers at the back of their jaw, just below the jawline and slide them forward. You will too. They are supposed to be there, they are the tendons operating your neck, but I will omit that information. They have just formed while they were speaking to me. When they find the lumps, that gives them about a week to live unless they can persuade a doctor to treat them – but doctors don’t want to treat them for smoking related diseases because that makes it look like there are more smokers. Doctors will fob them off, they will have to be really persistent if they want to live…
I have played this game with the gullible many times and in many forms, not just smoking. I have played at cold reading and became good enough that if I had been inherently dishonest I could have been on the telly. At the end, I normally admit the deception and explain how it’s done (except with the harridan types) but not this month. No, antismoking drones, I will not snap you out of it and send you on your way.
I’ll just send you on your way.
They don’t read this. They read antismoking propaganda telling them not to read this. So no, I am not forewarning the enemy and it wouldn’t matter all that much anyway. That level of gullibility cannot put up effective barriers.
I can’t cause much chaos on my own but I can cause a little bit. Since all the smokers will be outside, I’ll have plenty of ‘we haven’t met before, have we?’ assistants for my games so at least some of the drones will be driven mad. With a little luck they will go home and check their partners’ and childrens’ necks for lumps, and then troop off to Casualty to convert my little bit of chaos into utter mayhem. They might even take their cat or dog to the vet’s.
Compassion? Mercy? Compromise? What are those? Things I remember from the past, that is all. I haven’t seen any of that coming from the antis to the smokers so I see no reason to send any their way. The NHS can collapse under the weight of it all and the antis will expect me to care. The NHS already don’t want to treat anyone who isn’t in perfect health as defined by their lifestyle rules so as far as I can see, it’s no use at all.
Battle proper is joined this month. No prisoners.
I have to admit, I’ve been looking forward to this. I hope the drones play along with their masters’ wishes. It’ll be no fun if they see through the lies they’ve been told too soon.
Raise the black flags! No pity! I’ll shoot any man I see with pity in him!
The ashen flag, you mean.
Looking at the link, you have to pinch yourself. All the hoo-haa is simply because some people don’t like others inhaling the smoke of dried plant leaves.
That’s it.
That’s all it ever has been.
I woyld say ‘sign me up’ but I don’t do Facebook.
I will be buying an extra packet each day throughout October (began late last month) lust to confuse them and, come Xmas, free ciggies!
By Christmas, the price will be such that the savings will be enormous. Next year, I urge you to join the grow-your-own group!
What is really needed is a symbol (like that fish thing Christians put on their cars) perhaps a lighter and crossed fags instead of the skull and crossbones.
That’s actually not a bad idea. If it is a symbol cleverly designed, simple and attractive (like the Christian fish symbol, which is brilliant in it’s simplicity and is instantly recognisable) it could well catch on. Having one stuck on the back of your car (or whatever) would be giving the finger to all the antis, and inculcate something of a sense of solidarity among disparate smokers. We should perhaps give that some thought.
In fact the more I think about it, the more I like the idea! It would identify you as a member of what is almost an underground movement. The dispossessed!
I’ve sent a first pass design to Leggy for his perusal; you could have a flag, a car sticker, a T shirt or even some little stickers to put on lamp standards and pub walls.
I love that idea.
Hi Pat,
I’ll send a copy of my preliminary design to your site tmorrow, do with it as you will.
It needs to be really simple, perhaps even abstract. but conveying the message nonetheless. The Christian fish is brilliant – just two lines, but a wealth of meaning. We need something along those lines. something that can be easily graffited by anyone, instantly recognisable and powerful. Maybe we should set up a thread for ideas / submissions.
Rob the Bike, thanks for the design. Is it okay if I put it up in a post?
Of course, feel free to use or modify it as you wish.
The really funny thing about this is that I’m a lifetime non-smoker, but these bastards make me feel like taking it up as ‘peer pressure’ never did.
Brilliant, old fellow. I’d love to sign you up as a writer for the Libertarian Alliance, but you probably have no time and we have little or no money – we’d love to offer it if we had any: maybe you’d do it for nothing as you would love it simply, but I have no right to ask that.
I’m already proving unreliable as a contributor to Orphans of Liberty and other places too. It’s best I don’t promise to take on more at the moment.
XX nisakiman on October 2, 2012 at 8:42 am said:
That’s actually not a bad idea. If it is a symbol cleverly designed, simple and attractive (like the Christian fish symbol, which is brilliant in it’s simplicity and is instantly recognisable) XX
Hmmm. Aye, Maybe. I once worked with a “born again” so, to annoy him, I stuck a bloody big sticker of a cross with the red line trough (I belive “bad religion…some grouop or other in the 90s, also used it as a record sleeve). Two days later the thick twat asks where he could get a copy, “I think it’s great, no swords…brilliant!” Dumb fuck.
Hopefully the Jolly Zippo would not be easily confused
Heh. And some fell on stony ground! It was ever the way!
No swords? Why would he expect to see swords? There are no swords on the Nazi flag either, does he fly that too?
Aye. THAT confused me a touch as well. Fact is, he was serious, and the whole purpose of me having put it there was lost. Sometimes you think a message is so obvious, but forget you are messaging people with an IQ smaller than their (British) shoe size.
“We are always happy to oblige with a sledge hammer in the tooth department!”
Well, remember when you were a kid and wanted to be a knight in armour? Your sword was a stick with a shorter stick nailed across as the guard right? Now look at that cross again.
Well, I’ve got to tell you: After not smoking a cigarette for 20 years or a cigar for 6 years I decided to take up pipe smoking. My late father’s pipes have been lying around for a long time and I thought, “Why not”? I’m tired of listening to thin lipped bansturbators tell me what I can and can’t do and where and when I can do it.
What an opportune time it is too to stick the two fingers up at Tobacco Control.
I also bought a couple of new pipes. I used to smoke pipes years ago, and found some of the old ones but they need a damn lathe to clean them properly now. New ones are fun to ‘smoke in’ anyway.
I just recently killed my favourite. The bowl is finaly burned through. (sob!). But I have others. They are just, somehow, not the same.
As an ex smoker of some 25 years, as soon as I heard of this initiative by the bansturbators my first instinct was to go out and buy a packet of cigarettes. They really are that stupid!!
Everything they do just draws attention to smoking, every day. It’s a more intense advertising campaign than even Philip Morris could afford.
I wonder how many children will see all those new tobacco ads from CRUK and ASH on October?
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Well Leggy, for what it’s worth I’ve made a video to outline my interpretation of ‘Stoptober’ and do my bit for the nannies…
STOP PAYING £8 A PACK!
For a while now now I’ve been using a cigarette maker so it works out 15p a ciggy rather than 40p – a saving of two thirds. Because of course they can’t be advertised not many people know about them but I thought they deserved a bit of promotion; my contribution to the Octabber counter attack…
Can’t cigarette makers be advertised? They don’t actually contain any tobacco as sold. I get my papers and filters at the pound shop. They have no tobacco licence but they sell papers, filters, lighters, lighter fuel, ashtrays and more.
Good video though. I’ll stick with rollies but if the news gets out to the readymade smokers, that’s a good thing.
Especially if they grow their own.