Six Heroes and a Load of Hype

So EURO MP’s can smoke in their workplace, but the rest of the population cannot.

Welcome to Democracy 2007 - Euro Style. They are to be allowed to have smoking rooms, paid for by the taxpayers of course.

 Let me establish a couple of relevant facts before continuing.

 (a) I gave up smoking 4 years ago, and (b) I am not planning to open a café or any other kind of business.

 As many of those who know me will testify, I’m a clown who is as slow on the uptake as our MP’s are quick on the take, but unlike them I do not falsify my expenses in order to steal from the taxpayers. Or create fear to increase my control over those who we are supposed to serve.

 But where was I? Passive Smoking - the biggest load of unscientific hype since global warming. In fact The Advertising Standards Authority is to challenge the claims made by the Department of Health about the dangers of passive smoking.

The watchdog has received 26 complaints about the TV advertisement, 'Invisible Killer’ which shows cigarette smoke, at a wedding celebration, swirling around and into the mouths and noses of non-smoking guests. An earlier and equally obnoxious add showed a baby inhaling and exhaling cigarette smoke.

Donna Mitchell from the ASA has confirmed, in a report written by Liam O’Neal, and published in The Morning Advertiser UK, that the complainants accused the Department of Health of scaremongering, and that the ad would cause undue fear to non-smokers, thus heightening prejudice against smokers.

The complainants also maintain that there is no proof that passive smoking leads to an increased risk of contracting specific diseases.

Donna Mitchell from the ASA told morningadvertiser.co.uk: “We will be investigating and publishing a report in due course.

“We will ask the advertising agency or the Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre – which cleared the ad for use on television – to explain its rationale for clearing the ad.

“The responses will go to our ASA Council for consideration.”

Mitchell said a lot of the complaints had been about the dangers of passive smoking.

She said: “We would expect them (the respondents) to provide evidence to support their claims.”

But even if passive smoking could damage your health, so what?  Smoking has been banned in the workplace for years, and smokers have had to use designated smoking rooms. So what is the problem?

 No one frog marches non-smokers into smoking rooms, and smokers use them by choice. They are adults, and as a result of the statutory warnings emblazoned on each and every cigarette packet, unless they are blind or illiterate, smokers are well aware that there is a health risk from smoking.

 A health risk that is, according to the hype, almost as great, but not quite as large as the risk of being crippled or killed by a super-bug while a patient in a NHS hospital.

 (Oh, and if there are any global warming zealots reading this, how much energy and resources are wasted on printing on such a mass scale? Or doesn’t it count if it is a government initiative, Initiative…this government, surely not?)

If ‘X’ want to open a café and allow his or her customers to enjoy a cigarette with their drink, why on earth shouldn’t they? Both the customers and X are there by choice. Should X’s place prove so popular that it has to resort to employing staff, as staff for a café that allows customers to smoke, then the staff too are there by their own choice.

 So some asshole of a non-smoker may complain that they are in effect barred from X’s café, because they do not wish to inhale other people’s smoke? But why should their preference for a smoke free atmosphere be inflicted upon X, in their own premises, or their customers?

 Both X and the fictitious customer of the equally fictitious café and even I, have no need of babysitting by the state. We are adults, and are free to make our own decisions over our health, and the government has no mandate or authority to interfere with our personal lifestyle.

 It can cluck away like an old mother hen, but should it continue to peck me then be warned, I shall be having roast chicken for dinner.

.But why bother to vote when there are no demonstratively differences between any of the political parties? They are in the main, all lawyers.

 And nothing demonstrates the complicity between the MP’s of all parties more tellingly, than a shameful attempt by MP’s, to exclude themselves from the Freedom of Information Act, and in doing so remove themselves, and their annual, and fraudulent, fiddled expenses swindle, from our scrutiny.

 Of the 646 MP’s infesting Parliament – Just six of them, led by the Liberal Democrats Norman Baker and Simon Hughes, defended our right to know how some MP’s, our legislators, routinely swindle the taxpayer by submitting fraudulent expenses.

 Yes, six-hundred-and forty MP’s from all parties, colluded together to deny you the right to scrutinise their abuse of your taxes.

 Members of Parliament?  Fiddlers Federation more like.

 
With a few honourable exceptions:

We owe a debt of gratitude to ‘The Magnificent Six’ who opposed and defeated this attempt by their colleagues to place themselves beyond the scrutiny of those who elected them.

Here are five of ‘The Magnificent Six’: and if someone would care to name the sixth MP, I will gladly add his name to the following list, where it belongs.

 These are five of ‘The Magnificent Six’ who talked the bill out of parliament:

 Liberal Democrat  The Right Honourable Norman Baker. MP.

Liberal Democrat  The Right Honourable Simon Hughes. MP.

Labour                   The Right Honourable David Winnick. MP.

Conservative         The Right Honourable Richard Shepherd MP.

Liberal Democrat  The Right Honourable David Howarth.   MP

One wonders why it is that those crooks who submitted fraudulent expense claims have not been charged with stealing from the public purse?

 Could this be the real reason that the right to charge people with a criminal offence was removed from the police and given to the politicians of the CPS, and the reason why the criminal offence of 'Obtaining a Percuniary Advantage by Deception', an offence which would put most politicians and all the major bankers behind bars, was secretly repealed?

 Was it a move designed to protect their own, and so put themselves above the law?

 Power corrupts and absolute power makes corruption irreversible.

The stench of betrayal and corruption grows stonger.

 

Angry Old Git