Normality approaches

It’s been a hell of a start to the year. First grandchild, father reaches 80, another grand niece imminent (they know it’s to be a girl and they will all get train sets), and much more. Finally things seem to be settling down a bit.

I was supposed to get Lee Bidgood’s book finished in January but it didn’t happen. January was a bit of a blur, full of things I didn’t expect as well as things I did expect. Hopefully February will see it in print. It’s a damn good one.

Meanwhile in the real world, more and more political corruption is coming to light and those who didn’t win elections are still acting as though they did. Those who were never elected to anything still act as if they actually matter. The only change is that it’s all getting worse and fast.

We now have the spectacle of antismoking groups focusing on vaping and pretending it’s a problem that more and more people vape instead of smoking. It’s all ‘for the cheeeldren’ as usual.

Australia still bans the only successful quit-smoking method ever invented. Why? Is it because everything is upside down there? Has the Christmas-in-summer thing broken their minds? They have so many deadly creatures on land, sea and lurking in the dunny that smoking is nothing to worry about really. Can that be the reason? But they still push the patches and gum and Champix and still demonise smokers as harbingers of the Six Hundred and Sixty-Sixth Hand Smoke of Satan, all riding white supremacist racist pale horses with a bit of yellow staining around the hooves.

Australia pushes the stop-smoking methods that don’t work while banning the only one that’s been a success. They are not alone in this.

None of those methods were ever intended to work. The patches only work if you stick one over each eye so you can’t find your fags. The gum only works if it leaves such an awful taste in your mouth that you don’t want to put anything else in there at all. The pills only work because they make smokers kill themselves and the antismokers add them to the ‘stopped smoking’ list. Antismokers don’t want those things to actually have any marked effect on the amount of tax being sucked out of a legal product.

They are really pissed at ‘heat not burn’ gadgets. I looked at them but they are expensive so haven’t tried one. The antis are really upset at those because they are made by tobacco companies. Well, this is harm reduction being practiced by the tobacco companies – but that sort of spoils the illusion that all tobacco companies have one central head office in the deepest pit of Hell and that Satan laughs every time we light one up.

Satan hates smokers. We turn up asking for a light and he can’t pretend he doesn’t have one.

I bought another Electrofag recently. I’ve already mentioned it in the previous post. You can get a basic setup for less than the ludicrously inflated price of a pack of cigarettes in the UK. USB charger, battery, clearomiser and one bottle of vape juice will set you back £6.99 in a lot of the pound shops. There is no (legal) pack of cigarettes cheaper than about £7.50 in the UK. Vaping has not yet taken over from smoking for me but the prices mean it’s damn well worth a try.

You are advised to replace the clearomiser every few weeks. Replacements cost £1. A tiny bottle of juice costs £1. For those wanting to stop because of price, your initial setup is less than one pack of cigarettes and your weekly spend thereafter is way less than a fiver. That’s a hell of a lot cheaper than trying to do it with patches and gum and it has a success rate that leaves those methods in the dust. Yet the antis are outraged that the NHS even considers saving a fortune by prescribing these instead of Big Pharma’s overpriced useless junk.

If, like me, vaping doesn’t stop you smoking, you have risked less than one pack of cigarettes to try it. If it helps you cut down a bit you’ll save money. Switch to vaping for one day and it’s paid for itself!

So why do the antismokers have such a big problem with it?

Money.

If everyone switched to vaping, the tax take would plummet and the tax-funded antismokers would have no more reason to exist. When the problem is solved, the problem solvers have no more reason to be there.

It’s like UKIP. Their principal reason for existence was to get us out of the EU. That is now happening – it would happen faster if we had a Prime Monster with a bit of brain power but that’s a separate post – so it’s no surprise that UKIP are down in the polls. They’ve done what they set out to do.

However, the many antismoking groups, and those parasitic on the NHS for lifestyle control, depend on there being smokers to harass. They depend on there being fat people and Iceland shoppers and burger eaters and salt lovers and those who take two sugars in their tea. If everyone was slim and fit and Aryan, as they want (sound familiar?) the problems are all solved and they have no more reason to exist.

I think every smoker should switch to vaping for a week, maybe a month. We can all go back to smoking after that. By then, the Dreadful Arnott and her gang of Puritan zealots should have been totally defunded.

Or at least, we could grow our own or buy them in the EU – we are still in that monstrosity so let’s take advantage. Nip over to Denmark where a pack of Vikings or Skjold is under £4 in the corner shops. Don’t waste your time in duty free, you’re in the EU so it isn’t cheap in there. Get a month’s supply (it’ll probably cover the cost of the trip) and buy no fags in the UK for that month.

Watch the taxman panic. Watch the antismoking funds disappear. Watch them flounder around when the smoking taxes fall to zero. I’d predict that by the end of the month there’ll be no antismoking groups and no smoking ban. No need for them if nobody is buying cigarettes, right?

You’d see government actively encouraging smoking. They need us even though they hate us.

If you prefer rolling baccy or tubing, those are half the price on most of the continent too. A 180g pack of tubing baccy (makes about 360 cigarettes) costs well under £40 in Denmark. Corner shop prices. 18 packs of 20 for roughly £2 a pack. If you smoke a pack a day you just saved £95 on the UK prices over 18 days. Buy two and in just over a month you saved £190. Your plane ticket is paid for. You can get the tubes in Poundland at £1 for 200, and the tubing machine (Bull Brand) is also £1.

Can we organise this? It would be a killing blow for the antismokers. No tobacco tax for a month. We don’t all need to go overseas. Some will try vaping and like it enough to use it for a month – perhaps for good. Some are already getting theirs in the pub car park. It’s just us mugs paying UK tax that need to organise.

No tobacco tax for a month and the antismokers will be wiped out. Government will be on its knees. The NHS will be broken to the point where it has to shed the lifestyle parasites and get back to what it’s supposed to do.

Come on. Let’s do it.