I’m not bothering with links for this one. Pick up any newspaper…
Well it’s all over for another five years. We have a Tory government with an SNP opposition and all the other parties have no leaders and are running around like headless chickens.This would be a good moment to repeal an awful lot of shitty and stupid laws. It won’t happen.
56 SNP MPs! They are, naturally, crowing about what they’ll do but really they make no difference. It’s still 56 Scottish lefties, just like it was before.
The only real difference is that this time, those 56 Scottish lefties don’t agree with all the English/Welsh/Irish lefties because they are a different party with a very different agenda. They’ll sometimes split an opposition vote and might make things easier, not harder, for the Tories.
The Tories seem to have made a few gains in central-belt Scotland which was a really big surprise. Last time I think there was one little blue dot in between Edinburgh and Glasgow and this time there’s a larger blue patch. That was unexpected – at least I didn’t expect it.
Moribund is done for and the fight is on for the next captain of this sinking ship. Labour took quite a beating, but it was nothing compared to the Libby Dims. Utter destruction. So Little Clegg (he of the ‘repealing the smoking ban is like bringing back hanging’ quip) is doomed too.
And Ed ‘Sweaty’ Balls is gone. The Brown Gorgon resigned too. Things must be looking up.
Well… we’ll see. Last time the Cameroid had the fallback excuse of ‘Little Clegg won’t let me’ whenever he broke a promise – which was often. This time there is no excuse. Anything he does he does alone. No scapegoat.
I like being in that position. I liked working alone when I was self-employed, I like the solo shifts at Local Shop and when I was in mainstream science, there was only one technician who could tolerate working with me. The only one I trusted. Mostly I worked without technicians. I’d spend all my time checking what they’d done so I might as well just do it myself.
Not a single student ever failed. Not one. They might have left hating me but they all left with a HND/degree/MSc/Phd or whatever. There was one HND student with the initials JR who took four attempts at the HND module I co-taught with another guy. We actually planned to get T-shirts printed with ‘I Taught JR’. But she passed in the end.
I’m digressing. I never blame anyone else for my fuck-ups. Obviously they are few and equally obviously, they can be spectacular when they do happen. They are still mine. I was working alone so anything that goes wrong is down to me. So is everything that goes right.
I can’t think of any politician who can say the same. Not even Nigel Farage, who was complaining that proportional representation would have put his party in Wastemonster.
He is right of course. UKIP got about 4 million votes. But to say it now sounds like sour grapes. You knew the system, Nige. You knew how it worked. Work the system in place, not the one you’d like to have in place.
The result was a surprise to me. I thought we’d get a complete mess with parties scrabbling for a coagulation government, or maybe a re-run. Tefal Man won the day, and the next five years.
Nw we’ll see what he’s really made of.
underdogs bite upwards 
In a sense UKIP gambled and they lost. But it still might have been worth the gamble without the benefit of hindsight. Sure, Nigel et al coulda dumped all their eggs into a couple of baskets and walked out with two or three actual seats, but they took a flyer at getting a few more, PLUS establishing themselves countrywide as a party that enjoyed real, wide, significant popular support. 11% of the voters can’t simply be ignored, even if they didn’t get the official seats. They’re a big, raw, festering, and likely VERY unhappy boil that could pop all over the next election. In our own bailiwick I’d guess we’ll see any plans by the Antis to heavily push for open-air and apartment bans running into rough waters. Campaigns for higher cigarette taxes and against e-cigs are likely to find the road bumpier as well. The new government won’t roll back the pub bans but cigar lounges and hookah lounges (the latter as a “Look, we’re not UKIP!” gesture to the moderate Muslim community) may meet with a more favorable atmosphere.
Dunno… that’s the view of someone 5,000 miles away, so it may be off the mark, but that’s how I’d see it.
– MJM
LikeLiked by 1 person
“Now we’ll see what he’s really made of” (suitably corrected typo-wise).
I agree.
But the question still remains as to why he permitted the Plain Packaging thing to go ahead. On the face of it, it is a minor matter, but it bodes all sorts of afflictions on his ‘presidency’. We can forecast demand after demand, from even several of his own MPs (small majority, remember) for similar measures regarding alcohol and anything else that the Zealots demand.
Note the word ‘demand’, for is it not true that the Academics have got away with murder as regards tobacco? No one elected them, but they seem to wield enormous power. A possible way to control them would be to insist absolutely that student fees ARE NOT USED to sustain research. In fact, you could demand an enquiry about what funding sustained the Climate Research conducted at East Anglia university.
Japan tobacco nearly had a great success when it sued to have sight of the Stirling Uni original data about youth smoking and won. Why it then abandoned its demand is a mystery. Only secret agreements can explain that for any intelligent person.
—-
So what could we smokers reasonably expect from our new president?
We can expect nothing, but we can hope. What we can chiefly hope for is that communications between smokers (and vapers) grow and grow. For, in the end, it will be sheer numbers which will influence politicians.
I must do the lung cancer research again. At the time that I did the figures, I was not sure what I was doing. The mortality from LC had not fallen as it should have as the prevalence of smoking had declined. Yes, as the cause of death, it had declined somewhat, over the decades, but not as it should have, considering the decline of smoking. But we come up against the ‘conjecture that LC is a delayed effect of long-term smoking. There is no physical evidence of that effect. It is merely a conjecture based upon the statistics of the Doctors Study. “Doctor A started smoking age 20. He developed LC aged 60. Therefore his first drag on a cig took 40 years to cause his LC”. That is the only reasonable interpretation of ‘the delayed effect’. It is nonsense and there is no scientific justification for it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
J Can – I watch a lot of videos my boys show me about the games they play online (they research them like mad). Mostly war ones, Call of Duty etc.
Sounds like you calling for Regroup and Rearming in our War on Tobacco 😉
LikeLike
Not ‘our’ war … we didn’t start it but we’re in one 😉
LikeLike
But the question still remains as to why he permitted the Plain Packaging thing to go ahead
Labour bleating on and on about Lynton Crosby’s, the strategist that Cameron hired, previous employment coming up with all kinds of dubious speculation, though Cameron said that he had never discussed tobacco with him.
Tory strategist’s links to cigarette giant pile pressure on PM after tobacco policy U-turn
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/smoking-gun-david-cameron-dodges-lynton-crosby-cigarette-packaging-controversy-question-8713969.html
It went on and on until Cameron finally cracked.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“In fact, you could demand an enquiry about what funding sustained the Climate Research conducted at East Anglia university.”
As all that seems to have been quietly swept under the carpet, isn’t it time someone did some digging and came up with the names of those who set that scam in motion?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Indeed it is time someone did all that work. Can’t be bothered myself, though.
LikeLike
On the “delayed effect” excuse so often trotted out by antis when uncomfortable statistics about the LC rates rising amongst never- and ex-smokers emerge, it’s notable that this “delayed effect” has gradually lengthened every few years to enable them to keep using it. I can remember the days when giving up tobacco was supposed to render one as unlikely to contract LC as a never-smoker in the space of five years. Then it was 12 years; next thing you know, it’s 20; now I think it’s up to about 40 (that was the story about female LC rates rising because so many of them took up smoking in the 1960s).
The problem with this excuse is that it’s finite; there’s only so long they can keep extending the “delay factor” before it become counterproductive. Indeed, it’s now fast approaching a period that isn’t far short of an entire normal lifetime. Once they get to quoting a “delay” factor of 50 or 60 years (as they will have to do if they want to keep using this excuse for the failure in LC cases to plummet obediently) they will be, in effect, coming full circle and saying that smoking won’t do you any harm at all – because by the time it does so, you’ll probably have died from something else! I wonder if all the antis – with their natural tendency to cling, leech-style, to any story that has previously enabled them to blame anything and everything onto smoking, regardless of the fact that the more time that passes, the less credible that story becomes – have considered that?
It’s already starting to look very shaky. If the currently-quoted “delay” factor of around 30-40 years were to hold true, then we should right now be seeing the promised sudden and drastic drop-off in LC cases, being as we are now around 30-40 years on from the greatest and swiftest drop in the number of people smoking (i.e. the 1970s and 1980s), but are we? Are we Hell! As has been cited on here many times, in fact, the opposite is happening.
Which must, surely, eventually, lead someone, somewhere in the medical/research profession to contemplate the erstwhile-heretical idea that maybe – just maybe – LC isn’t caused by smoking, and never has been, and to start looking elsewhere for the real cause. Exactly how much time has been wasted with their one-eyed obsession with blaming smoking, and only smoking, for LC, and how many lives have been lost because of it, is hard to quantify, but historians in the future will surely look back at “anti-smoking madness” as one of the greatest injustices that the medical/scientific community ever inflicted on those whom they claimed to be in the business of helping.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“The Tories seem to have made a few gains in central-belt Scotland which was a really big surprise. “
As big a surprise as the Tories taking Gower..?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Mrs D reckons it’s down to all the English people retiring to Wales. The Welsh would NEVER dream of voting Tory in a million years, especially in Gower
LikeLiked by 1 person
There are three constituencies in Scotland which are not SNP. There are not Tories in the Central belt. There is one borders constituency which is Tory. It’s a big area but it has the same number of voters than all the rest. There is also a constituency in Edinburgh which is labour due to a local issue caused by the SNP guy which the labour guy exploited to a stupid degree. Lastly there is a libdem constituency covering Orkney and Shetland. Shetland voted SNP but Orkeny voted for a LibDim. All the rest are SNP.
The days of a house brick with a red rosette tied around it winning a labour constituency are gone, probably for good. No bad thing. Bear in mind the splendid Mr J Murphy claimed some £400k in expenses at Westminster over a year or so. £400k! Subsidised whisky and food in the WM bar.
Record swings away from the Labour Party.
Will things change? One way or another yes.
You’ll be keen to hear about the alcohol unit price saga which is due to be agreed or not by the EU in the next few weeks?
Local elections next May too. The joy of it all. I hope the Penguin Party in Edinburgh gain at least one seat. A number of Raving Loonies also. They couldn’t be more bizarre than the current Labour councillors in Edinburgh. £1 billion for trams which are slower and more expensive than the buses or the new train stop at the airport. They are going to extend the tram line too. You couldn’t make it up.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“You couldn’t make it up.”
Just wait until the Socialist National Party give themselves the power to take children into “care” from birth and we’ll see what the socialist paradise is really like.
LikeLiked by 1 person
The British government already has the power and the secret courts etc.
Here is a simple question for you. Why would the UK want Scotland to remain when we cost the UK so much money?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Russian tanks lined up behind Hadrian’s Wall?
LikeLike
I and my ExPat neighbours had a Hoot Party here throughout the election and the aftermath. It’s the first time in years that I have seen them en mass. All very different people but all rolling round the floor laughing. I didn’t realise that we had so much in common.
LikeLiked by 1 person
All in all, for those of us south & west of the border, the best possible result.
Otherwise, the SNP tail would be wagging the dog.
LikeLiked by 1 person
One thing voters don’t much like is their MP goofing off doing their own thing instead of representing them in parliament. And to top it off, making a sodding fortune whilst so doing.
George Galloway of Respect was one example of using his position to gain some form of credibility elsewhere (primarily on Press TV where he still fronts up a “live” question answer show).
But George pales into insignificance when compared to Gordon Brown. You can almost count on two hands the number of times he’s set foot in Westminster over the past five years – and the folk in Dunfermline had more than just reason to boot the pillock.
The fact that Brown’s reputed to have made millions on the talk circuit simply added to that sense of disconnect.
I am well pleased the voters hoofed them both. Galloway can try to be the next Mayor of London. So can Arthur Scargill, so long as they’re real good at rejection. My concern is Brown may become a monumental nuisance with the Scottish Labour Party. They need him like gonorrhea.
LikeLike
GB simply neglected to attend parliament whilst moonlighting.
The likes of Trougher Yeo, who accepted directorships & lucrative consultancies from companies directly benefitting from policies he strongly influenced, earned the contempt of even his own loyal constituents.
LikeLike
I don’t actually know if smoking causes Lung cancer. Or any other Cancer for that matter. And I don’t really care. The choice still remains mine.
I won’t bore you all with the vast numbers of my relations who smoked and drank far too much, and then all dropped dead at about ninety. This does not mean that I will be so fortunate.
One of my grandmothers dropped dead at the age of seventy, and she never smoked or drank in all of her life. Who knows, she might have lived longer if she had done.
In the meantime, I half hope that that I will die soon enough for my children to be young enough to have a really good time on what I have spent my life on building for them.
But not quite yet, Lord.
LikeLiked by 1 person