We’re used to hearing promises from politicians and knowing they are lying. Now it seems that lying has become the default position for everyone in public office. They don’t even try to twist existing truths any more. They just make it all up.
The Australian black market for tobacco is increasing, as Dick Puddlecote notes and the Healthists are simply pretending it isn’t happening. In denial of the published figures they pretend that plain packs and tax hikes are not increasing black market sales. And there are people who believe this!
A post on Nourishing Obscurity starts with the report of Nigel Farage slating the stalwarts of TV, Dr. Who and Strictly Come Something-or-other. I only ever watch one of those. It turned out, in the comments, that N.O. was duped by a lie. Nigel Farage didn’t actually say those things. It didn’t stop the Press claiming he did. When the news is lies, what then? If a politician lies and it’s reported by a lying press, could it come out as truth? More likely the end result will so utterly bizarre that even a Class 1 Drone would have trouble believing it.
They will though. As I have been proving for years, they can be induced to believe absolutely anything.
People also believe the Green Men when they fabricate their stories, but once in a while they get caught out.
Maybe twice in a while (h/t Nourishing Obscurity, the post referenced earlier.)
Now the Salties are firing up again. Six thousand imaginary deaths because of the Government’s refusal to pander to their ever-decreasing salt level demands. Labour, naturally, promise to restore the waste of public money they previously gave to these nannying idiots. Resistance is futile. You will be desalinated.
How do so many people fall for this rubbish? Even when it’s patently rubbish, even when it is clearly and comprehensively proven to be rubbish, they still believe it.
Second hand smoke – okay, I could convince anyone that was real. But second hand alcohol? Second hand obesity? Third hand smoke that’s deadlier than actual smoke and can pass througfh solid walls? I’d struggle with those.
Yet the healthists manage to convince so many – even when it’s been proved to be utter nonsense!
I am being outclassed here. Must try harder.
underdogs bite upwards 
C.A.S.H. – do emboldened are these weasels they don’t even attampt to hide it in their acronym! They are surely taking the piss out of us (or the salt)? And BTW low-salt crisps are shit
LikeLike
I’vew had to add salt to bags of peanuts in the past. I’ve stocked up on salt before it gets a ‘sin tax’ applied to it.
LikeLike
No, LI. The Zealots CLAIM that most of the population agree with them. The reality is that the population do not give a shit. Ask a group of people, composed of 70% non-smokers and 30% smokers if they agree that smoking is dangerous; the probability is that the 70% non-smokers will say that it is. It is almost certainly true that at least 10% of smokers will also agree. And yet it is almost certainly true that none of the those non-smokers and smokers have actually done any research themselves. The fact that they answer the question means nothing other than that they were enticed to state an opinion. The reality is that they do not know and cannot know. If they did ‘give a shit’, then they would have done some research.
I don’t think that there are as many drones as you think. Frankly, if the smoking ban in pubs was repealed tomorrow, I doubt that most people who go to pubs (much decimated) would give a shit.
Frankly, I think that the drones are very useful to realists – or will be eventually. It is precisely those people who will squeal loudest when they realise how costly for them the whole Health Zealotry industry is and will become.
LikeLike
So far they’ve blamed the cost on smokers, drinkers and fat people. Soon they’ll blame it on everyone because they just can’t stop. That might be when the drones turn on them.
LikeLike
The re-engineering of the human race has led many to believe in moral relativism: “What’s true for me might not be true for you,” etc. So, lies can be true and the truth can be a lie! Whatever works for you, innit? It becomes difficult for the simpleminded to discern the truth. Others, like well-paid “experts,” often invent the “truth”.
E.g. you can “prove” that the earth is overpopulated by showing a picture of squalor in Calcutta while ignoring the millions of square miles where nobody lives. Just don’t mention that. I’ve just been reading some reviews of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and people just buy into it on trust – trust! From a politician with a gigantic “carbon footprint” telling us all how we need to live like medieval serfs or the planet gets it.
As Arnie Schwarzenegger once said, “Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave,” therefore, tell them lies and mess them around, overtax them, use and abuse them and they’ll still suck up to you like soppy mutts.
And that’s why Cameron or Red Ed will be PM, because most people have been well trained.
Many, many people are afraid of the truth. Politicians for obvious reasons, but the general public too. That’s why they’ll call us UKIP voters names rather than debate. They are scared of Arnie’s premise being shattered and a situation arising where UKIP wins and they have to learn to stand on their own two feet, unaided at every stage by the nanny state.
LikeLike
All those benefits are really bribes. ‘Keep us in power or the free money will stop’.
There are a lot who vote for benefits and really don’t care about much else.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Ten years ago you could make fun of the Antis by saying they were worried about smoke coming out of their electrical sockets and plumbing. Today they’re stating those worries seriously themselves. Grrr… at the moment I’ve lost track of it, but just in the last two or three days I saw an Anti demanding a ban in her apartment building because when she turned on her tap water SMOKE came out of the faucet!
No, I’m not kidding… and I’d say that ranks up there with my CancerPhone quote in Tnacht (taken from a very serious message board discussion in Scientific American after the Winni-cough study came out):
“I’m a true believer in third-hand smoke, and I’m not even a child. At work I had to share a telephone with a smoker. I developed breathing problems, had a swelling in my mouth, and also had a “suspicious” breast biopsy. I started cleaning the phone off with “Wet Ones” wipes. My swelling went away, plus my breathing problems went away. Still have to be tested again to see if my biopsy is benign, but I’m pretty optimistic.”
– MJM
LikeLiked by 1 person
You can induce symptoms in people just by talking to them, you know 😉
Especially if they’ve been primed with all this propaganda.
LikeLike
Salt and vinegar, please. Salt? Yes, that’s one reason why I’ve got kidneys.
LikeLike
They never put enough salt on chips these days. I have to get a pocket salt shaker.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Politicians pronouncements should always be treated with scepticism. The number caught fiddling us taxpayers with their ‘creative’ expenses claims, should have taught us that. Manifestos aren’t worth the stone they’re carved in.
Journalists selectively (mis)report; sometimes through ignorance, sometimes by omission.
Those who prefer leftish/reddish propaganda can choose the Grauniad; those who prefer rightish/blueish propaganda can choose the Torygraph.
Poor TellyTax payers have the Beeb’s chosen flavour imposed upon them. Consequently, the number now refusing to accept their bias is at its highest level ever. Aunty attempts to thrust its own view of the political & climate world on millions, at home & abroad.
Thanks to the power of the internet, we can all assess facts & opinions for ourselves. There’s much misinformation out there; but at least ‘we’ can judge for ourselves.
The Beeb’s attitude towards ‘global warming’ / ‘climate change’ is well known. It’s virtually a foregone conclusion that a report of a natural phenomenon that has a ‘detrimental’ outcome, will be blamed on ‘climate change’.
/rant
LikeLike
That’s why they want to censor the internet. ‘For the cheeldren’.
They really don’t care about the porn. It’s just a useful excuse.
LikeLike
Yes. Ordinary people, small businesses, people without positions of authority and people with nothing personal to gain by lying almost always tell the truth, or at least the truth as they have been taught it.
LikeLike
Yes, I’m with Woodsy here.
LikeLike
Quite so. I think it was Mark Twain who said ‘If you always tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything’.
LikeLike
Thing is, if you stick up for the truth, you are now in danger of killing your prospects of ever having a job. Look what happened to David Bellamy…
Frightening how much control they have over us.
Even when you’re aware of what’s going on, you still find yourself going along with it, the indoctrination is that strong. I’ve got two bags of good quality sea salt in the cupboard, but they are both fast approaching their sell by dates and I find myself thinking, ‘Are they safe to eat then….?’ even when I know salt doesn’t go off. FFS!!!!!!
LikeLike
Sea salt? Have you looked in the sea lately?
LikeLike
The truth was the reason I used to be an Honours year tutor and then suddenly wasn’t 😉
I thought the truth was more important, and still do.
LikeLike
My dear Legiron, did you ever tell the story? I have not been here from the beginning.
LikeLike
I think so. I’ll tell it again later. I’ll have to go to work soon and I’m trying to avoid re-glueing myself to a chair…
LikeLike
Well, the low-salt, anti smokers seem to have made very few inroads here in France. None of this ‘No smoking within ten metres of anything, anywhere’ mullarkey. They still have ashtrays on outside tables.
LikeLike
I believe it was either socretes or john stienbeck who said, “Good men don’t need laws and bad men don’t obey them anyway!” I have several photographs of me and a group of twenty of us waiting to serve jury duty smoking beneath a no smoking allowed sign out side the courtroom. kinda absurd…
LikeLike