French lessons.

Here we go with the French theme again. I like the French. They just don’t give a shit. Their politicians get all aerated about some trivial thing and the rest of the country lifts a glass of red wine, lights up a Disque Bleu and says ‘Haw-haw-haw’.

That comedian of Leftie-inspired right-on indeterminate gender, Eddie Izzard, had the measure of it. No, not the measure of that, come on, the dirty mind test was in the last post. Eddie the Iz is a funny guy when he stays out of his ridiculous champagne socialism. But they never do.

Anyway, news from the email (ta, Marie, and I know you n’est pas Français) is that France is to impose the most vicious and despicable antismoker regime on the planet. Every piddling little bleat from every whining weasel in the antismoking movement is to be appeased.

In France. The birthplace of Absinthe. When the French authorities imposed a tax by liquid volume on alcohol, the French made it far more concentrated so that a litre of tax paid for about 800 ml of actual alcohol. It was intended to be diluted before drinking. I didn’t know that when I bought my first bottle but I knew it by the time I poured the second glass.

Well, here’s what will happen when the French government bring in all these new restrictions. The French will ignore them all.

The gendarmerie are too busy fleecing tourists to bother with enforcing this nonsense. Put up the price (they propose to put the price up to almost half UK prices) and the only people buying baccy in France will be British tourists. The French will take a drive over to Belgium once in a while.

Ms Touraine’s long-term objective is to abolish smoking over 40 years by discouraging new generations from taking up the habit. Her medium-term objective is to reduce the French smoking rate – one in three adults– to the present British rate of one in five adults, by 2024.

Why not now? Why not just ban it all now? What is this 40 years nonsense if it is really so critical to health? What is this rubbish about reducing 33% to 20% over ten years?

When it was proven that asbestos caused lung cancer, it was banned at once and specialists had to dispose of any residual material in old buildings. Why is tobacco not banned at once and removed from Mr. Patel’s ‘Early till Late’ corner shop by operatives in spacesuits?

Because there was no duty on asbestos. The fake charities are funded by government using money they steal from you and me and they don’t want that to dry up overnight. They have to wean themselves off it.

There is no physical addiction to nicotine. It does not exist. Any ‘withdrawal symptoms’ are the result of antismoker conditioning and are not real physical symptoms. It is entirely in the mind. I have known this for a long time and that is why I did not attempt to trek down five hospital floors for a smoke while I was in there. The only thing that bothered me was having no access to writing material. I had not expected to be detained.

The only addiction to smoking is the government’s addiction to the money they steal from it. That is why they always pull back from a total ban on what they claim is a really deadly thing. The government and the fake charities make more per pack of smokes than the tobacco companies could ever hope to.

And yet, they claim it’s the tobacco companies who are fleecing us? There is  far more tax than tobacco in every pack and if any baccy company wants to use that line, consider it a freebie.

Even so, all this antismoking stuff has taught me things. It has taught me how to grow tobacco and how to cure it.  A big one, it has taught me I can get at least ten cigarettes from one leaf. So if you pay UK prices for cigs you are paying £5  a leaf. The tobacco companies are not unfairly profiting from that, The government and the fake charities are. If you pay over-the-counter prices you are paying for your own persecution.

It’s not easy to grow tobacco in Scotland but it can be done.

It must be so much easier to do it in France.

I have seeds, going free.