Fisk it later…

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Late finish at work tonight and a surprise early start tomorrow. This cloud does have a silver lining though – it’s because Boss is training the new guy on the late shift. Yes, we have a new guy, and despite my bitter disappointment (I was hoping for a loose floozy) this does mean I can soon get back to spending more time writing than working. As long as he doesn’t encounter one of the more disgusting customers early on. He’ll need to be toughened up before encountering some of them.

I wanted to rip up this piece of pompous, arrogant, self-righteous and self-important bleating but can’t risk babbling too late into the evening. I’ll leave it for tomorrow – but feel free to rip into the factless drivel in the comments if you like. Most – heck, all – of the ‘facts’ have been long since debunked but the tobacco control drones will never see that. They’re too dim.

Can’t get into proper rant mode without whisky anyway and I can’t risk whisky if I have to get up early. That can be really quite nasty. I am consoling myself with a French red wine called ‘Fitou’. It sounds like someone spitting but it’s actually quite pleasant. The only thing I’d say was wrong with it is that it isn’t whisky.

Oh well. Best try to get into wind-down mode. I bet I’m still starting at the ceiling at 4 am though…

32 thoughts on “Fisk it later…”

  1. There is a poll – “Should ecig ads be banned?” NO – 71%, YES – 29%. So in that specific instance, the journalist is way out of step with his readers. Other polls have seen similar results – at least a first. Maybe the public is waking up at last a little.

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      • yeah – the polls used to show more against smoking bans then for them. This isn’t about what might be true or not but a campaign in the early stages aimed to scaremonger the public against ecigs as they have been terrified about smoking and smokers. Personally, I don’t fight for ecigs and couldn’t care less what’s said about then given that the majority of vapers and their orgs never stand up for smokers or smoking and instead use the abuse put out there about us to promote their own product of choice as a wonderful invention that will one day eradicate tobacco and smokers. It’s like that ecig firm that wants support against the EUTPD that would ban some ecigs. Why on earth should smokers support them when they were absolutely silent on the EUTPD that shafted smokers and outlawed such things as menthol cigs? In it together or each to their own. Vapers as a movement are not with us despite the very best efforts of those perceptive enough to see the bigger picture. When they come for vapers we won’t be here to help because they will have helped to criminalise us.

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        • It’s true that the majority of vapers don’t stand up for smokers – but that doesn’t mean the majority are rabid antismokers. The majority are silent. Most think that they escaped the denormalisation by switching.

          Very very slowly, that’s starting to change. They’ve been through it all with smoking and now they’re faced with it all again. The silent ones are starting to realise how it all works, and where it’s going.

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    • The ‘cough’ on the ‘no’ button, what hand is that? Not second or third hand contamination … Fourth maybe – ooh can’t touch that.

      Utterly pathetic.

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  2. Next time you’re in Tesco, Leggy, do yourself a favour and try some of the Aussie reds. I might be biased, but I reckon at anything but the very top of the market, they blow the French out of the water for value.

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    • Unfortunately that bottle of Fitou had sediment. Didn’t realise till it started getting cloudy. The last glass was soup – so it went down the sink.

      Tonight I went for white, Inycon from Sicily. I can see there’s no sediment this time!

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    • Me too about Zinfandel. Last night I fished a Malbec out of Sainsbury’s (Argentinian Morador), purely on the basis that it was “heavy” (E?) rather than “light” (A,B?) without any idea what that means. Still don’t, but pretty bloody good, much nicer than my usual box of rot-gut Merlot. Mind you, it was over 7 quid.

      Off topic, I found an eco-fag someone had left in my house. My curiosity piqued by the new anti-vaping mania, I gave it a go. Curiously frustrating. Maybe I need to cook the gunk up in a spoon and shoot in it a vein.

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  7. Do we really need people exhaling vast lungfuls of nicotine vapour in a sultry fashion directly at the screen?

    He must be absolutely traumatised on a frosty morning when everyone breathes out lungfuls of vapour in real life, I’ll make sure to do it in a sultry manner now though, just in case he’s watching.

    This is a game that everyone can play.

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    • As usual, though, although nearly all the comments rip the article to shreds, they are almost all vapers, and the majority are of the “we all know how terribly harmful smoking tobacco is, that’s why we vape…” variety.

      I find the credulity of these people quite breathtaking.

      Here they are, faced with Tobacco Control telling them how potentially harmful vaping and second-hand vaping is, and reacting with absolute fury! But at the same time they are quoting similar rubbish from the same source about real smoking.

      Hasn’t it occurred to them that this is what TC does? Lie? Constantly? About everything? Do they not make the connection?

      Honestly LI, much as I support the vaping community, sometimes I think they deserve everything that’s coming to them.

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      • Vaping is a new branch of the anti smoking/tobacco movement. Most vapers (indeed most people) naively believe it’s about health and social acceptance, when for many years it’s been more about who controls, and thus profits from, nicotine. It’s in their best interests that real smoking does not decline to the point where they’ll be picking up most of the tab. At best, they’ll be maybe 10-15% of the adult population. A small enough minority to be taken advantage of.

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        • It’s also in tobacco control’s interests to keep people smoking. Their Pharmer pals can’t profit from ‘alternatives’ unless there’s something to be alternative to. That’s why TC keep pushing smoking in the faces of the cheeeldren. If we all quit or die out, their jobs end.

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        • Clive Bates recently asked on his blog why e-cig sales seem to be declining.

          Propaganda or product: why has e-cigarette use dipped in England?

          Naturally, most of the respondents were vapers, but since he specifically asked for smokers’ views too, I naturally obliged. Twice.

          nisakiman
          February 9, 2015 at 5:03 pm · Reply

          I am what is popularly referred to as a ‘dual user’, although my preference is for the real thing. I use a 2nd generation device, and I have to say that for the most part, I think it’s very good. If they could fix the leakage problems, I’d be even more impressed. E-liquid is sticky and nasty, and I really don’t like the fact that (particularly when it is on its side)it tends to seep gunk all over whatever it’s next to.

          But to the question as to why e-cig sales seem to be dropping off, of course all the bullshit propaganda borrowed from anti-tobacco will be having an effect. However, what I (and probably many others) find off-putting is:

          1)When one looks for info about e-cigs on the internet, the dialogue is dominated by aficionados using 3rd generation devices discussing the various merits of frankly unintelligible components that mean absolutely nothing to the tyro looking for information. And there seems to be a desire amongst the (3rd gen) vaping clique for preserving the mystique. All the talk of making your own e-liquids and so on is really thoroughly off-putting for someone who is just looking for a simple, easily accessed and reasonably priced way to be able to smoke without attracting the opprobrium of the judgmental ones.

          2) The superiority complex displayed by many vapers (I noted one above referring to cigarettes as ‘stinkies’), assuming that by switching to e-cigs they are somehow better than smokers, is a real turn-off for many smokers. What the hell gives these guys the right to think that they are somehow superior, just because they switched delivery device? And to add insult to injury, many of them then adopt the rhetoric of the anti-smoking fanatics, in the fallacious belief that by doing so they will be spared the stigmatisation propaganda directed at smokers! Blind fools that they are. Tobacco Control hates vapers at least as much as they hate smokers, perhaps even more so, because they see vapers as evading the punishment for not conforming, so carefully crafted over the years. That will not be allowed. It’s not about health, it’s about destroying the whole social culture of smoking. And on that level, vaping is smoking.

          For me personally, since I’ve learned just how much rubbish we are fed on a daily basis about smoking, vaping isn’t about ‘harm reduction’ at all. I don’t honestly think there’s a lot to choose between smoking and vaping on that level. It’s merely a means of avoiding the spiteful imposition of the likes / dislikes of a minority of fanatics that has introduced me to vaping. It has the advantage of being (almost) odourless, and means I can very often vape where thanks to the mindless zealots I am by law constrained from indulging my pleasures of tobacco.

          Which brings me to another reason smokers are becoming less inclined to vape. What’s the point if vaping is banned everywhere that smoking is? The main, nay, only reason to vape as far as I’m concerned is that you can sit and enjoy a smoke with your pint, just like the good old days pre-2007 when people used to go to pubs. Why else go to all that trouble with batteries, e-liquid etc?

          Vapers with half a brain will have realised by now, having seen the lies and exaggerations put out on a regular basis by TC about e-cigs, that lies and exaggeration are their modus operandi, and if they happily lie about vaping, ergo they have probably, almost certainly been doing exactly the same about smoking.

          So why switch? There’s little advantage, apart from cost, and that’s unlikely to remain the case anyway once the lawmakers and tax collectors get to work.

          ……………………………………..

          nisakiman
          February 12, 2015 at 7:40 am · Reply

          So a very basic ethical step would be to stop misleading people. A good public health goal would be to empower them to make informed decisions.

          Unfortunately asking Public Health / Tobacco Control to stop misleading people about smoking or vaping is akin to asking a carnivorous predator to adopt a vegan diet. They’ve been disseminating lies and propaganda for so long that they don’t know how to do anything else.

          As I said in my comment above, it hasn’t been about health for the past few decades (have a look at the ‘Godber Blueprint’ for confirmation of that), it has only been about destroying the whole social culture of smoking. And the ethos has been ‘The end justifies the means’.

          So don’t expect any succour for e-cigs from Tobacco Control or Public Health. Because, you see, “It looks like smoking”, and that is anathema to both TC and PH. So it will be ‘de-normalised’, just like smoking tobacco has been. They will rig ‘research’, they will trot out their ‘experts’ to tell all and sundry how dangerous vaping is, and they will continue to issue bogus press releases to a supine and unquestioning MSM, doubtless quoting ridiculously high figures plucked out of the air (or spat out by SAMMEC) about how many people are killed worldwide by passive vaping.

          And thus the Tobacco Control gravy train will roll on unimpeded.

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      • I often feel the same way, but more and more are coming out as non-antismokers. There is hope for them yet.

        The companies, though, chose the wrong side to support. I wonder if they realise it yet?

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