It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas

Nicholas

Bon voyage Sir Liam - and good riddance.

Now we just to need to get rid of all the other monkeys on our backs.

Optimus "Sir Lancelot Sprat" Prime

Rod,
please post those statistics about the numbers of people that doctors bump off every year by cocking things up, I love repeating them to the odd members of the "caring proffession" I meet.

MNC

This Liam fella sounds like the most boring man in the world.

Bill

I remember this man's attempt to make everyone automatically an organ donor -- unless one specifically undertook the rigmarole to opt-out. The news that this enemy of freedom is gone is cause for celebration indeed!

Ken

How much did he spend on needless Tamiflu vaccines and can we net it off his pension and golden handshake?

Fergus Pickering

Of course the next man will be no better. Neverthless - another one bites the dust. Splendid news.

Jeremy

Bill:

"The news that this enemy of freedom is gone is cause for celebration indeed!"

Not so fast. It's like the buses at the Angel...there'll always be another one along in a minute.

phil

Come on Rod ,from an ex smoker I APPLAUD HIM he has saved me a fortune in dry cleaning and now I can breathe again too without spending even more on sinus medicine ,and surely he has saved many lives on at least this issue .I am sure you know more about him than me but I have to believe he was sincere even if wrong ,and I wish the old boy a happy retirement .-soppy phil-well its raining PS PLEASE READ WHAT I WROTE TO YOU ON THE "MAGNIFICENT" THREAD TOWARDS THE END -YOU COULD BE A BIG HELP

Keith D

Mines a double! You should have a healthy measure too Rod,as you will be inundated with cries of "waycism"against ginger monkeys.

rod liddle

I'd be absolutely delighted, Optimus: Iatrogenesis - death by doctor or nurse - accounts for 72,000 people in Britain every year, or more than the number of those killed by smoking, drinking and being fat combined. This figure does not include those who die from hospital superbugs, incidentally.

Figures from the Royal College of Physicians.

EyeSee

Maybe Rajendra Pachauri is up for it, he seems to be involved in just about everything else. Or Jonesie -he has all the experience of scaremongering and fiddling statistics to ably fill Liam's shoes.

Jeremy

...and besides, we're still stuck with the smoking ban. Its author might have gone, but the harm he did remains to be undone.

Maggie

Worst of all he failed to warn us that voting for the Labour Party would be bad for our health.

Frank P

Rod Liddle (1.14pm)

I think you'll find that figure doesn't include the thousands who die of despair while in the 'care' of geriatric wards, as a result of being left in their own incontinent bodily waste; or whacked with haloperidol (the chemical cosh) because they wake up the night nurses demanding attention, thus often preventing the angels of mercy from doing their second jobs competently through fatigue the next day.

But then, we've all got to die somehow and sometime anyway - haven't we? As you're good at statistics - how many people died last year in total in the UK, and how many were born? As for the demographics ... no! Don't even go there; you've done enough pre-Christmas shit-stirring as it is. Jack Daniels - straight? Why not rye (wry) and dry to suit your literary style?

Hawkeye

Excellent. Now we just need to chuck the Labour govt and all their sycophants in the quangocracy.

It's a good start. I do hope that Ed Balls gets his "Portillo" moment and if so I WILL be up for it. Oh yes...

Snowcole

And it's snowing.

Jack Dawson

What good news. The doctors' training disaster was a supreme example of incompetent, out of touch management accompanied by hubris.

Tron

My mother started smoking in the 1930's. She had a healthy life but was endlessly nagged by doctors to stop. At the age of 85 years she broke her hip. The filthy NHS hospital fixed her hip but killed her with a hospital infection before we could get her out of the place. Her doctor could not speak English so I never got the details. They would not let her smoke before they killed her.
I think they let prisoners smoke.

David Ossitt

Sir Liam became Chief Medical Officer in 1998 and has touched the lives of every one of us; his dour doom laden manner must have caused the death of many.

Cynical Seacole

Does this mean Brown can appoint the next one before the election?

If it does then the party hasn't started yet.

Rupert Fotherington-Smythe

Excellent stuff, Rod!

poppy tupper

Tron seems to be evidence that smoking during pregnancy results in children with low intelligence.

Baron Pipin II

Tron @ 4.04: your mother’s tragic case sums the fate of us all right. The pseudo-liberal gargoyles of science, politics and MSM deprive us, amongst other things, of pleasures, and we accept their messing up with our lives by their inept decisions in meekly silence, well, except for a bit of ranting.

And Liddle jumps up and down with a glass of Jack whatever, as if the departure of this dreadful, ignorant man signaled the end of the nightmare. Others, too, join in celebrating as if being freed from one of the do-good apparatchiks pave a way to a promised land free from the straightjacket of nanny-state rules, regulations, statutes and what you have.

My guru Goethe would have put them right: None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.

Baron

poppy tupper seems to be evidence that putting one sentence together can be accomplished easily by a totally brainless human being.

Dixon

"Jeremy
December 16th, 2009 2:01pm
...and besides, we're still stuck with the smoking ban. Its author might have gone, but the harm he did remains to be undone."

Never undone, but maybe undermined. In my work I visit more pubs than most publicans. I can tell you that the technically "outdoor" smokers extensions on many places are now the heart of the pub. If you are not a smoker you have a choice: join the smokers in their heated, dry, illuminated, TV-equipped smoking area ( I was in one that met that description last Saturday ) or sit on your own inside. Or better still, if its such a misertable toe-rag we are talking about in that case, urinate-off home and leave the rest of us in peace.

Obviously, the ban was the product of people clueless in the reality of Human social behaviour. It was drafted by quasi-autistic Aspergers sufferers ( like Prof Nutt,whose social-comprehension deficit I raised last month ) or indeed Donaldson, who might be pitied for their inability to relate to normal Human discourse but who by the same token should never be given any kind of influence or power.

As for undermining ridiculous laws, the ban on 100 watt light-bulbs is already being laughed at by retailers. I now know two large high-street retailers in my locale who are doing a roaring trade in them, openly and unmolested.

Then there was that ban on hunting, where it all started really. How many foxes lives has that actually saved?

But its going to get a lot worse, I can see. The Green-Fascists are going to be forcing all manner of prohibitions upon us before long.

Nothing will change until everyone has been deprived of something by one ban or another. Particularly when the ban-it maniacs find their own pleasures being banned.

Dixon

"poppy tupper
December 16th, 2009 8:01pm
Tron seems to be evidence that smoking during pregnancy results in children with low intelligence."

Here we are...the above response to what was, by any measure, a moving comment by Tron, illustrates perfectly the kind of person that I referred to in my previous comment. Severely mean-spirited and with severe social-comprehension deficit.

Nasty, scrooge-like and shallow.

phil

You lot are an amusing bunch and remind me of myself when as a smoker I hated all those that told me not to.They were right and I was the idiot -I used to sit with all those who stunk the place out with foul breath stinking clothes and smarting eyes and thought it was me that was clever .We all knew where Elvis was drinking and who was riding Shergar .Lord Lucan came from time to time ,oh happy days I wish I were still an idiot -ok there is your chance ,I would have taken it like a flash and offered a fag all round ,whilst calling for the ambulance for the odd one who dropped down every half hour or in fact every six minutes as it is sadly all over the UK.

Dixon of all people I am surprised at you ,you were always my shining light of common sense.

Tron

"poppy tupper"-spare me any more examples of your "intelligence".
I lost my mother. I think I know what you lost.

Dixon

"phil
December 16th, 2009 9:55pm
You lot are an amusing bunch and remind me of myself when as a smoker I hated all those that told me not to.They were right and I was the idiot ..."

You are right...you're still the idiot. You're the one making idiotic assumptions. I'm not a smoker, never have been and dont base my assessment of a law on my personal habits.

Lupus Lungfish

Donald can go to his grave happy in the knowledge that he has put plenty of publicans out of business. Well done Donald.

Lungfish

Tron- Friday 18th December 1992 is when I lost mine- we had a crash on the way to a Levellers gig at the Birmingham NEC. I'm just sobering up now!.

Lupus Lungfish

Bent double, like beggars under sacks,Knock Kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, till on the haunting flares we turned our backs-but my 'Enter' button has stopped working- I therefore cannot put any paragraphs in. And towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep and punched up the call centre.Many had lost their boots but limped on upset that they had not got through.Blood-shod, All went lame, All drunk with white wine spritzers,deaf even to Donald, Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. Gas Gas! Terry Wogan etc etc

Big Mouth

Very good news indeed.

Bloodsucking Lungfish

Some of us long fanged blood sucking folks are being discriminated against. We demand an all night service.

Big Mouth

Does 'underlying health problems' mean your 78 years old?

Tancred

Tron, you have my symapthy.

The comments of "Poopy" Tupper just go to show that the 'net, for all it's benefits, is home to many mean spirited Trolls who would not dare to say such things to peoples faces - they just lurk in the undergrowth, making nasty comments.

Just remember. It cannot be nice being her.

That is her punishment. Every day.

Fergus Pickering

I like the smell of tobacco. And a lot of girls find it sexy.
The ads that equate smoking with lack of sexual performance obviously haven't considered Humphrey Bogart. A lot of people might have settled for death in their fifties if they could have Lauren Bacall for their very own in exchange.

Wilhelm

''Elvis was drinking and who was riding Shergar .Lord Lucan came from time to time ,oh happy days I wish I were still an idiot -ok ''

Care in the community doesnt seem to be working.

Peter from Maidstone

I think smoking is a foul and disgusting habit, and I am glad that I can go into a restaurant and not worry about the smell of smoke. But I absolutely opposed and oppose the ban on smoking and almost took it up as a protest.

I know that once you let people rule our lives in such a way then even if I benefit this time round I could easily be the victim the next. We use a lot of incense in my Church and that could very simply be defined as a health hazard and made illegal.

We stand together or we get picked off one at a time.

Wilhelm

Saw on SKY news a few weeks ago, David Hockney wanted to go to his local pub in Yorkshire to have a quiet drink and a cigarette, he cant do that now.

Hockney said and I quote '' I loathe, despise and detest Tony Bliar, Gordon Broon and liebour for what they have done to England.''

David Ossitt

"A giant ginger monkey has been lifted from the back of the nation, a ginger monkey jabbering false statistics and whipping up the health scares"

Do not cheer too soon Rob; the gibbering monkey was at it again this morning on your old radio program.

He was rabbiting on about alcohol being dirt cheep; spouting opinions as facts, (laughably) saying that increasing prices in supermarkets will save the pubs.

This from the man who has done most to damage to the English Pub.

daniel maris

Well he's still there for the moment - on Radio 4 this morning trying to get a minimum price for alcohol.

The knight of the realm really seems to have no idea about how things work. Preventing under age drinkers in pubs has driven them on to street corners and into parks.

You can't change the UK contact-free style of parenting for children over the age of 5. So all his proposals would back fire. Raise the price of alcohol and they'll be glue sniffing or trying street drugs or sniffing stolen petrol. Any number of possibilities occur.

Personally I'd remove the extra duty on alcohol as a first step to recognising that price is not the problem. But I'd also be looking to remove welfare dependency and encourage better parenting and policing.

I would also make this suggestion: there ought to be an environment where young people aged 15-19 can meet and drink alcohol in a more controlled environment than your normal pub. So there would be only relatively low alcohol drinks on sale - fairly weak beers, lagers and alcopops - and more checking on levels of inebriation. There could be music and dancing, games and so on.

I think this would be a better approach, to get children off street corners and out of parks into a more salubrious environment.

Optimus "remember your hippopotamus oath" Prime

The bugger was on the Today show this morning, he says children under 15 should be prohibited booze completely (this is in the home) and at 17 it should consumed only under parental supervision. My parents kicked me out at 17, I had to spend the summer before university living the girls hall of residence of the college my then, (sexily older) girlfriend lived in. My parents didn't supervise anything I got up to in that glorious summer, least of all the boozing.
Sir Liam should read the story of Chicken Licken, he was wrong too, although perhaps more measured in his public statements.

William Campbell

You start off and finish your column with a line about going to the pub, but in the middle you mention people who smoke not going to the pub any more.

In the interests of greater transparency ie so we can know whether you're talking bovine excrement, could you say how much less often you go to the pub these days, giving examples and sample figures per week/month?

Also, I'd say tha idea of non-smokers suffering "exponentially" from their smoking friends being so unable to not smoke for literally minutes at a time that they stop going to the pub is a bit strong.

If any of my smoking mates thought like that I'd think they'd lost their minds - or their self-control.

They can always pop out for a quick fag. And in the meantime, my nights are "exponentially" better - no sore throat from breathing in fumes all night and my clothes don't smell like an ashtray.

ROBERT TAGGART

DONALDSON = DORK !... PERIOD.

phil

DIXON "Or better still, if its such a misertable toe-rag we are talking about in that case, urinate-off home and leave the rest of us in peace." That was you was it not ? I am more used to your common sense and education,but you have every right to say I am an idiot thats ok with me :)Its wilhelm whose opinions I object to because he definitely fits that description .

phil

Peter from Maidstone
December 17th, 2009 7:41am -PETER I admire your stance but may I ask you to consider the rights of those that do not wish to inhale the smoke ,also that there are bans on coke marijuana ,heroine ,rape and many other things for our protection to which you probably would not object ?-just a thought here in a sea of jokers .,and I do like jokes !

Contravariant

Had a terrible nightmare. My daughter was married to Sir Liam and they were coming to Christmas Dinner. Too awful to describe.

Marcus

Now I too am a sad sack writing such correspondence as this, wishing all to hear what I have to say because it's terribly terribly important.
There's something uncomfortably mean-spirited and self-interested in the tone of Rod Liddle here and all his legion of mostly daft-sounding fawners supporting his views on the issue of anti-smoking laws. I smoked for 25 years. Gave it up ten years ago, but still had a heart attack just two months ago, because of what fags had long done, bad food and booze, in that order of culpability. Still like my beers now and then. Now look - it hurts no one (unless I got silly drunk or croak and leave dependents in the poorhouse because of it). But smoking ain't quite the same at all. Fags CONTINUE to hurt me - and everyone else, a great deal - when I can't avoid breathing it from other people's smoking. You will have realised I have nothing 'original' to say on this matter. But Rod, let's say you're intelligent enough to have grasped, and fully concur with, all the known, undebatable perils of smoking. Yet you would smoke in my presence no doubt and think me out of order if I thought you a selfish bloody fool and splutter with outrage if I picked it from your mouth and shoved it where the Sun doesn't shine. We've all got rights, Rod, remember ? And I suppose we're all self-interested and dress it up as 'rights' at times. It's all nuts. Live long, my friend.

James "Victor" Delingpole

Please can I join in belatedly and say how vile, sour and characteristically libtard-ish I found Poppy Tupper's remark too? Her father Alf - Tough Of The Track - Gawd rest his soul must be turning in his grave.

Peter from Maidstone

phil, those are good points - but the difference is that this Government is happy for cigarettes to be legal to purchase and smoke. The other things are illegal in all contexts.

I would be perfectly happy for local restaurants to choose now whether they wished to re-introduce smoking areas or not. Those that did not would get my custom as I do not like the smell. But if a restaurant or pub wanted to allow smoking then I am an adult and I can choose if I want to frequent it or not.

A business should have pretty much absolute freedom to run as it chooses. If it wants to allow smoking then that is a business decision. If it wants to refuse to serve me because I am a white. middle-aged Christian then that is fine, it is a business decision - outside of monopoly situations.

Once we start telling businesses who they must serve and how then we are in a marxist state. And of course we are, and all business is essentially an arm of the state.

If we are adults then we should be free to choose which places we go for a meal, and those places should be free to choose what sort of environment they provide. And if I don't want to work in a smoking environment I don't need to. We don't have a caste system of heriditary bar staff!

phil

Peter from Maidstone
December 17th, 2009 11:46am

I understand from another thread that you are a decent and religious man and that you are fair minded (that was quite a mouthful wasn't it ) but I must point out that our government takes its taxes from the fag industry because it needs it not because it approves of it ,and while I am at it can I say Marcus you are so right and so much of this thread perhaps in "humour" is utterly irresponsible.

Well I am having one of my serious days prior to Wilhelm getting out of bed .

Peter from Maidstone

Sorry phil, but Governments do not take taxes because they need them. Most of what Governments spend taxes on is not needed at all - certainly not needful for a Government to provide. I do consider taxation to be theft - not absolutely of course - but in the sense that every penny taken from me should be justified and should be assented to in a democratic process. We do not have a democratic process any more. I am not represented. Yet a large proportion of my income is taken from me without my consent, and even with my complete and utter objection.

If the Government were not socialist it would not need so much tax income. If David Cameron were Conservative he would appreciate this. I hope he is and does but I have no confidence that the amount I am taxed will go down at all under a Conservative Government because it seems to believe it needs to do exactly the same as a Labour Government but thinks it will do it better.

A. MacAulay

The likes of Sir Liam do not invent the statistics they quote. They are provided by a busy little army of civil servants, who, no matter what the name of Donaldson's successor, will still be to hand churning out drivel for their idiot masters to proclaim. Twot-swapping will bring no relief.

Dixon

"phil
December 17th, 2009 11:08am
DIXON "Or better still, if its such a misertable toe-rag we are talking about in that case, urinate-off home and leave the rest of us in peace." That was you was it not ?"

That was indeed me, back in my youth when you were a smoker and I verbally harrassed you if you abused a non-smoking area. However, at least in those days it was the smokers who were the bullies, so I had some justification.

"... I am more used to your common sense and education,but you have every right to say I am an idiot thats ok with me :)...."

Sorry Phil, you choice of words ( when you said that you were an idiot ) made that snipe too tempting to resist. But there was that serious point though, that those who suppported the ban seem to assume that only smokers would oppose it.

Rhoda Klapp

Once the government taxes a sin, the government becomes a pimp. They have no further interest in eliminating the sin.

Dixon

I think Peter Fromm Maidstone answers the issues raised by our non-smoking ban-supporters. Like Marcus, who thinks it lame to even comment on a web-site.

Questions to Marcus that I would add are, 1) why isnt it lame for you to do the same then? and 2) isnt it profoundly "sad" that someone who chose to smoke ( your mistake brother, noone made you do it )and had to have heart-disease to make him stop, then wants the entire population of this country to be subject to legal restriction simply to suit his self-created predicament!

If he thinks other people are "daft sounding" he should take a moment to consider the paranoiac enormity of that, his own position.

Like I said, I have never smoked. But I am every week negatively affected by that damned ban.

Dixon

Whilst we are at it, its the hypocrisy of the principal monkeys, the medical profession, which really stinks. They whine incessantly about alcohol ( having moved on from their "success" with tobacco ) and yet theirs is the profession most characterised by alcoholism.

Moreover, figures from the US ( which I assume would be pretty much matched by those obtained from our own quack-monkeys ) indicate that medical professionals are 130% ( yes, one hundred and thirty per-cent ) more likely to commit suicide than members of our society as a whole!

Brilliant, just the kind of people we want dictating our life-style.

Wilhelm

Phil

Why all the hate ? it aint good karma.

Baron Pipin II

Marcus, my suffering friend, you have my sympathy, but not my vote. Human body can take in everything, and that includes inhaling tobacco smoke, in moderation. Trust me on this one. If it couldn’t, there wouldn’t be 6bn of us running around what with breathing the fumes from cars, polluting our bodies with 24lbs of artificial additives each year and stuff like that.

You seem to be of the view that the nanny state has some noble, heart warming motive for telling us what to do and what to avoid doing. Wrong thinking. The ban on smoking, and the one that’s coming (drinking) arrived from the combination of two factors. A new list of preferences for treatment by the NHS. It’s no longer that great old indigenous unwashed, the guys who slogged in factories and mines, many of them smokers and social drinkers. It’s the future of the land, the young drug abusers, the keen binge drinkers, the victims of bearbacking, immigrants with Aids and such like that our enlightened society favours. And, the budgetary restrains on the NHS. Not enough money to cover our medical ‘wants’, some layers of the society have to be turned into pariahs.

Are you aware that the air quality on aircrafts deteriorated since smoking got banned? No air-conditioning. Couldn’t air conditioning in pubs have been the solution? Nope, the fanatical health fruitcakes would rather sacrifice one of the institutions that aided social cohesiveness than apply common sense. (Fanaticism doesn’t imply a greatness of an objective, merely an obsessive desire to reach it).

The research agency that cooperated with the anti-smoking lobby got dismissed when one of their finding suggested that staying in a smoke filled room for a year equals smoking (and inhaling) one single cigarette?

A human body has to be ruined at the point of death. What’s the bloody point in dying when the body’s in excellent shape.

Lupus, my Rhipidastrian friend, stay off the booze abit.

phil

Dixon
December 17th, 2009 2:44pm -I would find it hard to be offended by you as you know I have been a fan for years ,I understand the need to take ones chance from time to time and admit I do it to wilhelm :) , but it does get a little boring with him ,as he only ever copies and pastes what I have written and I cannot laugh at my own jokes can I .?

Lupus Lungfish

ROBERT TAGGART- is your shift key playing up?- pop it out with a blunt knife, apply the nozzle of a powerful vacuum and pop it back- works very well.

phil

Peter from Maidstone
December 17th, 2009 1:34pm The only thing guaranteed are death and taxes ,an old one but still true :)

phil

Wilhelm
December 17th, 2009 3:16pm -willie reciprocate my Christmas good wishes to you and your family which you ignored and I will give you a break -its you who sowed the seeds and you who have reaped the whirlwind .just be nice and the world will listen .

cuffleyburgers

Rod

I was in madrid this week - how delightful (even for me, an ex-smoker) to go into a pub and smell smoke.

You'd love it I'm sure

Lupus Lungfish

Baron- One day I'll grow up and become a Tetrapod. And no I haven't been very sober since Friday 18th December 1992.

Dixon

"Lupus Lungfish
December 17th, 2009 4:56pm
ROBERT TAGGART- is your shift key playing up?- pop it out with a blunt knife, apply the nozzle of a powerful vacuum and pop it back- works very well."

What can I do about the dissapearance of my key symbols. You'd think I would know which was which by now but as they disappear you'll notice my typos get more numerous.

Next keyboard I shall have to laquer before use.

Lungfish

Dixon- What are talking about?!

Lungfish

Dixon- key symbols?- explain!, I'm lost as usual.

Battle 2807

Someone said that smoking is allowed in prisons. As it is. Also MPs are allowed to smoke in their subsidised bars.
One rule for the great unwashed (us) and another for them, eh?

ROBERT TAGGART

RE - KEYBOARD / LUPO / DIXO !
CAPITALS (AS OPPOSED TO... PROVINCIALS ? !) BE EASIER FOR SOME OF US TO READ ON SCREEN. ALSO, AS AN INDOLENT SO AND SO IT SAVES ONE THE 'BOVVER' OF TOO MUCH FINGER WORK !

daniel maris

Having succeeded with smoking, there is no doubt the health lobby is now moving in on alcohol.

After that it will be cream cakes and other fatty food.

After that I wouldn't be surprised if it was lack of exercise. We have anti-social behaviour orders. Perhaps we'll have failure to exercise orders. Sounds impossible? I think the smokers of 1945 might be rather amazed that they cannot smoke in pubs.

London Calling

Birth Certificates should come with a Government Health Warning... Life Seriously Damages Your Health - Go Directly To The Undertakers...

Forget the Monkey…I want the Organ Grinder :)

Dixon

Lungfish, me keyboard innit.

Lee Jakeman

He cocked up. Has there ever been a more likely candidate for a life peerage?

Leon Vestey

Why could Liam not take Gordon with him? or even Alistair?
Not fair!

Dixon

"daniel maris
December 18th, 2009 12:59am
Having succeeded with smoking, there is no doubt the health lobby is now moving in on alcohol.

After that it will be cream cakes and other fatty food.

After that I wouldn't be surprised if it was lack of exercise. We have anti-social behaviour orders. Perhaps we'll have failure to exercise orders. Sounds impossible? I think the smokers of 1945 might be rather amazed that they cannot smoke in pubs."

Most people found it hard to believe 100 watt lightbulbs were about to be banned when I told them THIS year! Having such a bizarre prohibition become a reality it is now cleat that utterly anything is possible. The more wacky the more likely.

Trying to envisage some such laws I speculated last year that to buy tobacco products would require becoming a registered smoker, with a ration. I thought that was pretty far fetched. A few months later someone at the BMA proposed exatly that. I would hazard a bet that it is the next step in their agenda on smoking.

When I was a child my sister had to expklain why the ld houses had bricked up windows. The light tax. I thought we had moved on from such pottiness in the modern worl. Well, now we have trading in Co2! An abstraction: oone actually buys and sells the stuff, just a figure for its notional allowance, which is what is so bizarre, trading something that nobody posesses. Like buying and selling pixies. That has to be a few steps more incredible than a tax on windows.

I realy do feel as though the loonies have taken over the nut-house.

Wilhelm

''just a thought here in a sea of jokers .,and I do like jokes !''

Yup phil, you are a joke, across between Jerry Lewis and Stanley Unwin. You set the joke up and I deliver the punchline.

Its like taking candy off a baby.

Baron Pipin II

Are you aware that the EU subsidizes tobacco growers? The weed cultivation gets subsidized, its purchases taxed heavily, and smokers kicked as pariahs. One couldn’t make it up.

phil

Wilhelm
December 18th, 2009 4:46pm Do you not find it strange that I manage to debate with all the other people here and yet all you do is cut and paste whatever I say ,you do not need to do that they have seen my words previously .I am very bored with you but politeness tells me not to ignore you ,Dixon has a phrase I would like to use BUT HE IS SENIOR TO ME HERE AND I WILL NOT PLAGIARISE HIM .OK , so find someone else to write to ,but really the rest of us are serious people and probably as bored as I am -PS ,I dont mind a joke or a Christmas wish ,but otherwise leave it off eh '

Joe Strummer

But will the control freakery and Governmental health fascism disappear if Cameron is in Downing St ? I don't think so.

Wilhelm

'' Do you not find it strange''

No.

Dixon

Yippeeeeee!...to expand on this topic.....Copenhagen has been a big failure!!!!

Real reason to celebrate.

Lupus Lungfish

Dixon- You're right- Copenhagen has been a failure.

Lupus Lungfish

ROBERT TAGGART- read you loud and clear old friend

Lupus Lungfish

Delingpole- Just listening to Rage Against the Machine- you used to quite that kind of stuff didn't you?!

Accord Eacole

It is indeed. The massive failure at Hopenhagen ought to bring a smile and some Christmas cheer to many a frosty face - you would have to have a heart of carbon not to giggle.

Here is a raised glass to the Copenhagen Accord - a haddock of a failed treaty! And its rapid demise into oblivion and nugatory irrelevance.

Dave Atherton

The Labour manifesto in 2004 was quite clear that smoking in wet led pubs and private clubs was not going to be banned. More Labour lies.

2 years into the ban 5,000 pubs have closed and 120,000 full and part time staff have lost their jobs when separate, ventilated areas would of kept eveyone happy.

David Cameron to the rescue?

Baron Pipin II

Accord Eacole: well summed up, my friend, and witty, too.

Dixon

Re Dave Atherton.

The plight of pubs is indeed awful and almost any other industry would not have been lumbered with the extra stress of the cig ban.

However, if you look at my much earlier comments you'll see why I dont think it is the real culprit. Most pubs that have customers have totally sidestepped the ban. To those that do not have customers it is irrelevant. The dropping of pubs like flies in winter started well before the ban and it is due to much more complicated dynamics.

I have recently been in a pub-restaurant that had about two hundred capacity and five customers on a Saturday, whilst a smaller one in the same distreict was packed solid. This illustrates what is happenning. The custom seems to be focussing upon smaller numbers of pubs that are doing very well and abandoning others that are caving in at a prodigous rate.

Clearly, had this been say, the car industry, any government would have been wary of sticking an additional boot in. But the reason they did and continue to do so is not specific to politicians but is related to the ongoing preoccupation of the media and professional bodies with unconscious issues of a resurgent British class bigotry expressed through the coded language of an attack on drinking. Much as attacks on "zionism" articulate veiled anti-semitism, so attacks on alcohol and the drinks retail industry convey unconscious contempt for a perceived "lower class" who are ( quite baselessly ) identified in stereotypes with the abusive use of drink.

Hence the muddled notion so popular among such unconsciously class-stereotyping people that raising the price of booze will only affect abusers of it. If that doesnt tell you they think only the less well off abuse alcohol, then what would?

If you think Cameron will be less likely to go with that flow you need to get stronger coffee.

Peter Crawford

Just found out that they are trying to ban smoking OUTSIDE pubs now. Apparently Mandelson has put a temporary halt to this.
Can you anti-smokers out there please explain why a convicted child-murderer has the right to smoke in prison while the rest us are not even allowed to spark up outside a pub ? Thought not.

toby forward

Peter Crawford, one answer to your question (and there are many good answers), is that the prison is the child murderer's home, and we are all allowed to smoke in our homes. The pavement outside the pub is not yet a banned area, but it is still a public place, no one's home. The pavements by the doorways of the pubs where I live are strewn with fag ends. Smokers, you see, usually don't give a toss about anyone but themselves, so it's okay to chuck the tabs on the floor.

workie ticket

Donaldson...Copenhagen.....seems like he would be the ideal candidate to head an IPCC commission to monitor the 'international comunity's' 'noting' of the historic 'agreement' reached there.

Derek Green

"The dropping of pubs like flies in winter started well before the ban"

Your comments are well argued and very astute, but this particular part is incorrect, I'm afraid.

Pubs closing
2006: 216
2007: 1,409
2008: 1,973

(source: BBPA, who are not anti-ban)

The credit crunch started in 2008, so what happened in 2007?

Peter Crawford

Toby forward - We do not have the right to smoke in our own homes. If, to elaborate, you were the witness to some horrible crime and the Police or any other State employees came to your home to interview you they would be permitted to stop you from smoking. By law. Got any other "good reasons" why the human right of a convicted killer is a human right not granted the rest of us ? Thought not.

Dixon

Derek Green, persuasive figures, I shall keep my mind open until I have a chance to look into it again.

Wilhelm

'' so find someone else to write to ,but really the rest of us are serious people and probably as bored as I am''

Phil comes out swinging like Joe Louis.

toby forward

Peter Crawford, for the tiny amount of time that we're not being interviewed for witnessing or committing a 'horrible crime' I think you'll find that we do have the right to smoke in our own homes.
Just out of interst, how 'horrible' does the crime have to be before the interviewing officer will prevent us from smoking? Could I, for instance, smoke if I witnessed a traffic incident? Or a smash and grab? Or a mugging? When does the 'horrible' factor kick in? I'm really curious.
I'm also curious to know why you sign off every post with 'Thought not'? Is this your family motto? Have you translated it from the Latin for the benefit of those of us who don't have classical languages? (I know a bit of Greek, but it's been a long time since I read it with any frequency.)
'Thought not' certainly seems to me to be fitting motto for you.

Peter Crawford

Toby Forward - another two things. In what sensible, rational way can a prison be considered an inmate's home ? Come off it. Do they own it; pay rent on it ?
Secondly you make the sweeping generalisation that "smokers, you see, don't usually give a toss about anyone but themselves". ( And why put that mimsy "you see" in the middle of that utterly baseless assertion ? I'm not five)
Still awaiting any one of your "several good answers". Whats the matter, cat got your tongue ?

toby forward

Peter Crawford. I refer you to the post immediately above your last. They seem to have crossed. No cat. Tongue intact, thank you.

Peter Crawford

Toby Forward - Then please formulate a coherent argument as to why convicted criminals are permitted to smoke in public places by right and the general public is not.
To answer your stupid questions. No "thought not" is not my family motto. It is a rhetorical device employed to get people to really think hard about what they are going to post which obviously didn't work. I don't have a family motto.
You are "curious" about what I consider a "horrible" crime but you are missing the point again. The fact is that any State employee or anyone sub-contracted to a Government agency can ban you from smoking in your own home. Even if that happens only once in your lifetime it's still bloody wrong.

Why not answer some intelligent questions instead of coming out with daft ones ?

phil

Wilhelm
December 19th, 2009 7:47pm -----hardly willie ,Joe Louis usually managed to connect and put the "bum of the month" out of his misery ,I have not managed that yet ,you keep getting up .Perhaps your love affair with the BNP is thickening your skull ,whilst reddening your neck ,but I do admit you do have courage to keep coming back for more ,the ref should have stopped this contest ages ago to save you from unnecessary punishment ,but as you seem to like it and instigate it, I will continue with Davids permission
-------.

Why not try your hand at making mince pies writing is really not your game .On the other hand willie I am probably too serious much of the time and you do provide a little levity at least for me if not the others .Vaya con Dios willie if he can be bothered with you and once again I wish you a happy Christmas as I doubt that anyone else will .I cant believe I said that but as you seem to want to be seen as a buffoon ,I must oblige .

Dixon

Well, back in the days of "Life on Mars" when coppers smoked in the station I actually made one hang his out the window before I would talk to him.

That illustrates what I was like ( no,
I dont mean in that I knew the inside of a cop-shop ), I mean I was venomously anti-smoking, how far I have changed and also how far our society has. The change on my part is a direct reciprocation of the other.

When smokers bullied non-smokers I never once hesitated in speaking out, even on one occasion single-mouthedly getting a gang of about eight yoofs puffing away in the non-smokers downstairs of a bus to up-camp and retire to the smokers deck. It boggles my mind thinking about it now.

Now, however, that its the anti-smokers who have become the bullies I feel obliged to speak up on behalf of those of the nicotine persuasion.

Frankly, Toby Forward strikes me as the bullying inverted equivalent of one of those abusive yoofs on the bus. How on Earth can he validate such a statement as "Smokers, you see, usually don't give a toss about anyone but themselves,..."

In fact, a good argument could be made for it being the non-smokers who dont care about anyone but themselves. Hence their inability to tolerate even the most trivial overspill from other peoples life-style. Fag buts for Chrissakes!. If they are such a problem, dont grovel in them!

Dixon

Do any of you remember that episode of Star Trek in which two aspects of the same man were dissociated and locked in a dimension all their own to struggle for eternity?

I cannot help wondering if Wilhelm and Phil are actually like that, two heads of the same person locked in this perpetual bickering that we see before us?

As the great Bacharach would say" Wots it all about..."

Fergus Pickering

Toby Forward. You lefties are all the same. You can love a murderer because that love is entirely theoretical. You do not expect to have tom meet the bugger except with bars between. On the other hand you, absolutely untheoretically, hate smokers, that you come across every day, because they smoke, you see, and then some of them drop their fag ends on the pavement. Give them a break, old son. It's Christmas. But then you're all Scrooges, aren't you? Read 'A Christmas Carol'. It is obvious that Scrooge's politics are Radical. We Tories don't think like that AT ALL. And God bless you, everyone, even you, Mr Forward, even you.

toby forward

Fergus, I've met rather a lot of murderers, as it happens, without any bars between us.
As for tolerance, it cuts both ways. I've been entertained by smokers in their homes, where they insist on smoking, and, I'm sorry to say, I've had very uncomfortable times with the same smokers who insist on smoking in myhouse. Once, after a meal, I invited a smoker who was my guest to walk in the garden with me while she smoked. She flatly refused and insisted on smoking where she was. I could repeat these examples endlessly. Smokers, you see, lose the talent for politeness because they are driven by their addiction. There are no pissing and non-pissing areas of swimming pools.

Wilhelm

Phil

I'd like to wish you, the wife and the 7 kids a merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah.

Are you happy now ?

phil

Dixon
December 20th, 2009 2:26am

DIXON --I perhaps have drunk from the same well as you namely that of Don Quixote -I do not back down easily ,in Willies case I will never accept the attitudes of the BNP from the knucklehead side of their party,unlike my affable discussions with Herbert T, .nor his petty present of a portrait of his leader for CHRISTMAS :).
------------------------------
Mostly you manage to hit the nail on the head with your offbeat humour but this time you have missed it .I take the Mickey out of Willie and enjoy the opportunity for a little levity as a break from our deeper discussions .It pretty obviously affords him some vicarious pleasure to play the stooge as it gives him a position here which otherwise might elude him . Unfortunately he is unable to do other than cut and paste my words .and positions for those kind of skills being in short supply in Switzerland ,they have sent him to us .I cannot bring myself to tell him where to go in the manner you used earlier and said I would not plagiarise you ,so perhaps you will do me a favour after all these years and do it for me as I have had a better offer . :)-Just as an afterthought maybe you would like to take him on your payroll ,his price is very reasonable .

phil

Wilhelm
December 20th, 2009 11:26am it took a long time Wilhelm but I am happy to accept your good wishes ,and of course confirm my own which I.sent you ages ago .I have replied to DIXON on our behalf :)and if David allows it you may take it in the humorous spirit with which it was intended .I hope he does as it is one of my best efforts .DAVID !!

Lupus lungfish

Chill Phil.

phil

Lupus lungfish
December 21st, 2009 2:43am -I am chilled honest:) ,and I have written ,nicely to Wilhelm who has started to write sensibly .BTW MY POSTS AS THEY SAY CROSSED IN THE POST ,BUT I MADE AMENDS LATER .HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU AND EVERYBODY HERE .

Euphobia1

I have been trying unsuccessfully to contact Ron Liddle as last night in NZ I saw his TV doc on 'The trouble with Atheism', I know I am years out of date but that's life. It is a pity that he makes personal contact so hard so contact has to be public

This is a serious enquiry and one I hope Ron Liddle will answer truthfully. Nobody else has so far

The Theist religions today are the cause of much unhappiness in the world. I do not have to expand on this as Liddle is wise enough to know they are.

The Modern Scientific Theory of Evolution simply proves that the biblical 'Adam & Eve' don't exist. It does not prove the non- existence of some sort of Deity.

Thanks to The Modern Scientific Theory of Evolution the world knows absolutely, no doubt about it, scientifically proved that the biblical 'Adam & Eve' and their 'Sin' which is the basis for the entire Theist religions do not exist so the rest that follows is superfluous.

There is not doubt about this. All the physical evidence proves that A&E are fiction. A&E are 'real people' and so have to abide by the laws of nature if mankind is to be damned to eternal torture. No 'just' court of law would convict on allegorical/ metaphorical evidence.

This is a fact. The bible is a work of fiction full stop. So why doesn't somebody say so loud and clear?

Riddle is intelligent man. He must be to hold the position he does. He obviously had a science education of some sort so knows about gravity, relativity and evolution. He will know about the scientific method. Science has given mankind the opportunity to enrich the world .

I am at a loss to understand how an intelligent educated man like him can present such a documentary with a straight face.

In fact I am in bewilderment that any highly educated person can believe in the face of such irrefutable, tangible, physical evidence can present such a misleading programme. There may be a God but it is definitely not God the Father. It is all so silly when it can be stopped.

One day this myth will be outed for the stupidity it is. All the evidence is there it is just that the establishment is to frightened to say so. Lots of jobs and positions of power depend on the Bible myth. Even Riddle's documentary for which I presume he was well paid so why didn't he address the A&E problem. Now that would have been something.

I am open to debate. Tell me exactly how the bible can manage without A&E with physical evidence and I shall be happy to change my mind. You may write in confidence if you wish.

I don't expect Riddle or anyone will have the courage to answer this! No one in the establishment has so far with the exception of Pro. Ken Miller and even he had to give up on A&E. His answer was he believed in 'Darwin's God' and as we all know Darwin did not believe in a Theist God.

Happy Seasons Greetings and when you are in church give a thought to the existence of Adam & Eve and wonder if the pain that has been inflicted on the world by the myth has been worth it.

It is time for the world to grow up, face facts and move on.

Lets see if the Spectator has the courage to address this question. I doubt it or pass this on to Ron Liddle.