I was going to write some starting rules on the story collection idea tonight but Dick Puddlecote seems to have started a minor flame war. Just a little one. I’ll set up some loose and flexible story rules later. It’s not going to be suitable for children, because I’ll have a story in it.
In my self appointed role as internet Liverpudlian (calm down, calm down, dey do dough don’t dey dough) I thought I’d sidle up to the little fire and see if I can turn it into a conflagration.
It all started when DP posted a rant by Clive Bates demanding that vapers be left alone now they’ve given up the real thing and taken up some synthetic steam based nicotine gadgetry instead.
Simon Clark took considerable exception to the post, and Grandad wasn’t happy either. Frank Davis took a rather less excitable view, as a good smoker should.
Like Frank, I own several Electrofags and even tried the cigar version (didn’t like that one, it was so big it gave the impression of sucking a dildo and I am not risking photos of that!). I never intended stopping smoking and still don’t, but the range of flavours available means I keep them and still get them out once in a while. I like the idea of ‘smoking’ absinthe or brandy or apple pie. I heard about one new Electrofag that holds three different flavours of ejuice at once and you can switch between them. Link is coming as soon as I get it.
I don’t think it’s possible to get tobacco flavour right. There are so many different tobaccos and blends. A smoker who prefers Marlboro will notice that Embassy don’t taste the same. It’s simply not possible to produce a generic ‘tobacco flavour’ that will make all smokers instantly think ‘Oh brilliant, my dreams are answered’. Can’t be done.
And then there’s the whole lighter thing and the real smoke and well, all of it. I like smoking and I am never going to be ashamed or embarrassed to admit it.
It does amuse me when one of the girls at work comes outside with us smokers then pulls out an Electrofag and tells us how much better it is. Uh… you’re out here in the cold and the drizzle too, or hadn’t you noticed? Out here in the delivery bay next to a main road watching the trucks drive in and out, shivering and getting damp and breathing traffic fumes. Really, the difference between my baccy smoke and your steam is insignificant in this situation.
Okay, it’s a food shop. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone smoking in a food shop in the last 56 years (to the day ;)). So I would not ever expect to be allowed to smoke in a food shop and would probably be mildly shocked if someone did puff smoke at the Parma ham. Yet vaping is not smoking so the vaper girl, as far as I can see, causes no issues if she vapes inside. Okay, maybe not in the shop, but in the staffroom I see no problem.
The Dreadful Arnott and the rest of the vehement anti-people brigade see a problem. It looks like smoking! Horror! If they saw that electronic cigar they’d faint. It looks like smoking and like low grade kinky porn at the same time. All I’d have to do would be to fill it with brandy and dip it in salt and the Righteous would spontaneously combust.
I know A Certain Someone is going to suggest filling it with cream. No. Just… no, okay?
It’s still NO.
I don’t call Clive Bates a Righteous. Why not? Because he stopped, and the Righteous never stop. He drew a line in the sand and said ‘No more’. Okay, it rings hollow as Simon Clark says because of the past but as Doolittle said to Bomb 20, the concept is valid no matter where it originates.
Clive drew his line in the wrong place and much too far along the beach, as Grandad said, but he did draw that line. For the true Righteous, like the Dreadful Arnott, there is no line. Ever. It never stops for them. One day they will arrest children for chewing on a pencil because it looks like smoking and they will still not be satisfied.
Clive Bates would be happy to stop with smokers becoming vapers. In my case at least he can take that idea, write it down, roll it up tight in glasspaper, tie it with barbed wire and ram it up his arse but even so, he does have a place where he would be happy to stop. That’s enough to rescind his Righteous badge.
I know Clive was once head of ASH. I know he was in there with the daft ‘passive smoking’ nonsense. He resigned because the madness crossed his line in the sand. He had a place he wanted to get to and then stop and it became clear ASH wasn’t ever going to stop. I think he actually resigned before the invention of Electrofag.
I really think Clive Bates does believe it is about health. It isn’t, it never was, but I think he believed it. Maybe now he’s starting to see the light.
Maybe he can now see the monster he helped create.
underdogs bite upwards 
Leggy said, ” It’s not going to be suitable for children, because I’ll have a story in it.”
What Leggy SHOULD have said (if he was totally honest):
” It’s not going to be suitable for children, because I’ll have a story in it where I EAT the childen. ”
;>
MJM
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“Maybe he can now see the monster he helped create.”
I doubt it. It’s not within the mindset of zealots like Bates to ever admit that they were wrong, or made a mistake, or “went too far,” in anything – even if, inwardly at least, they realise it. Perhaps Bates’s support for e-cigs is the closest we smokers are ever going to get to an apology for the damage he and his colleagues forcibly inflicted on our lives but, quite frankly, voicing his support for a completely different group of people who used to be his victims, but aren’t any more, is pretty pointless, as apologies go. It’s a bit like running over your neighbour, and then trying to make amends by knocking on the door of another neighbour’s house and saying how much you like them! That’s always assuming, of course, that his support of e-cigs is supposed to be some kind of “bridge building,” which it might in any case not be. If he at least had the courage to point out the glaring similarities between the junk science being invented about e-cigs and the junk science already heaped upon real cigarettes, then his rants wouldn’t be so hypocritical. But, of course, that would be tantamount to admitting that, all those years ago, he was – err – wrong, wouldn’t it? Which brings me neatly around to my first sentence …
But anyway, I guess he probably thinks it’s important to keep that wedge firmly in place between vapers and smokers. Heaven forbid that they should ever get together to fight junk science on behalf of each other – that would bolster smokers’ strength considerably, and we can’t have that, can we? He is, after all, still an avowed anti-smoker, and as we all know, for anti-smokers, anything is justified in the name of The Cause – even, if necessary, purporting to support people who do something which carries the stigma of “looking a bit like smoking.”
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Oh he will never admit his errors or his past lies but at least we can say he had an end point to his hate.
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“he and his colleagues forcibly inflicted on our lives”
To be fair, he and his colleagues pushed for it but, ultimately, it was those bloody stupid bums on the green benches that inflicted it and they can rectify it any time they like.
On the green benches lies the problem of not admitting they were wrong
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“Okay, it’s a food shop. I don’t recall ever seeing anyone smoking in a food shop in the last 56 years (to the day ;)).”
Happy Birthday Mr. Iron! :> (You *are* saying it’s your birthday there, right? :> )
“So I would not ever expect to be allowed to smoke in a food shop and would probably be mildly shocked if someone did puff smoke at the Parma ham. Yet vaping is not smoking so the vaper girl, as far as I can see, causes no issues if she vapes inside. Okay, maybe not in the shop, but in the staffroom I see no problem….”
“Maybe not in the shop”??? Leg, er, look, 56 is at LEAST 30 years too young to be getting senile. “Maybe not in the shop”??? Is that what you’d say if she was blowing bubbles? After all, the “danger” is probably roughly the same: just think of those deadly little droplets of highly corrosive detergent or desurfactant or whatever the hell is in that bubble stuff! Watch a bubble burst in sunlight: Look closely and see the thousands of little DDs (Death Droplets) dance gaily in the sunbeam before dispersing into the air and forcing their way down young throats and into young and vulnerable lungs to cause terminal lung rot.
How many have died as a result of this Agenda 21 Droplet Depopulation Design? Sadly, no one actually knows. Governments have universally refused to fund any research into the problem and those who’ve tried to launch investigations have been “disappeared” do quickly and efficiently that there’s no official record of them even existing!
Vaping is as innocent as Mother’s Milk by comparison (Actually, the concentrations of “deadly chemicals” in vapor — and most definitely in “secondhand vapor” — is generally far lower than the “safe” levels that the United Nations has measured in mothers’ milk around the world.)
Leg, you can tell us. Seriously. Have you been bought off by Big Bubble? Have they threatened your loved ones? Did they send a messenger at night to dangle a butcher knife over your private parts until you agreed to toe their line?
Tell us. We can help.
– MJM
P.S. “One day they will arrest children for chewing on a pencil because it looks like smoking and they will still not be satisfied.” Heh, are you kidding? Design a pencil that looks like a filter cig and have a kid try to demand the right to play with it in his or her mouth during class and just see how fast he/she is expelled and remanded to state custody if they refuse to stop.
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Heh. If I cough at work it’s instantly smoking related even if I’m pulling dust from under shelves. I have to examine how many nonsmokers exposed to dust and flour cough as much ;0
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Happy Birthday, Legsy. Have a good one!
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Happy Birthday old fruit.
It’s spot on with the individual and smoking. I stopped immediately and I never bothered since except for an annual celebratory cigar on national no smoking day. My other half smokes 30 – 40 roll ups per day and one day without a fag she becomes impossible to live with. I like the scent of rolling tobacco and pipes so I happily live with her smoking. I just object to the cost but I guess the occasional trip to Belgium / Holland sorts that out. She will never stop smoking as she genuinely enjoys it and she has no desire to vape. The latter may happen one day but her mother lived to 86 and she smoked 40 / day so I guess she will carry on. I’m tempted to try vaping as it may help me to cut down on the pork pies and chocolate!
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Happy Birthday young fella
I gave up sucking on pencils when they took the lead out of the paint – what’s the point of doing something without risking a little danger?
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‘Sucking on a dildo’…………..instant mental image and nano second later LOL which was more guffawish than a belly laugh. Thank God I wasn’t drinking anything at that moment. As for glass paper wrapped with barned wire that was rather inspired. I really cannot fathom why a well ventilated room in a pub won’t do. Children wouldn’t be allowed in and would not see adults smoking. On the street or in the beer garden, they would see folk smoking. This is one reason I cannot fathom it. Must be hate in their banishing people into the cold and wet. Well sod ’em; sod all the kill joys and prohibitionist bar stewards. I am planning a return to the joys of biotechnology and microbiology myself by setting up a microbrewery. I already have premises, and am working on buying the kit. It’s the tasting I am looking forward to.
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I’ll vape where ever they let me during the day, love my custards mostly, back on to roll up in the evening. Luckily work if vape and afternoon beer friendly.
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