Politics

As most of my regular readers are aware I engage, quite frequently with my local MP. I had a delightful e-mail exchange on the run up to the General Election which sadly didn’t tell me much, other than:

I think it is vitally important that we get the right balance to manage the risks and the benefits of e-cigarettes.

Whenever a politician says “balance” I immediately cringe, especially as it is a phrase that is overly used by one Mark Drakeford when speaking in political wibble.

In case you’ve been asleep for most of this past week, Wales held the first reading of the ludicrously titled “Public Health (Wales) Bill” in the Senedd. Many were expecting a fairly inglorious climb down from the nutty Minister for Health and Social Services. At least, that’s how it has been reported by Auntie Beeb:

The decision this afternoon can be interpreted in two ways.

Some critics will view it an embarrassing climb down - and ask why did the health minister press ahead with the proposed ban in the face of significant opposition and unclear evidence.

There are currently 73 MEPs in the UK. Elected every five years (although I don’t actually remember the last MEP election). Being involved in Europe means the UK needs a lot of bodies to “fairly” represent the UK in matters being discussed in European committees, councils and so forth.

According to the Euro Parliament (Office of the UK) website, the region I live in has 7 representatives. 7!

• Patrick O’Flynn (UKIP)
• Vicky Ford (Conservative)
• Richard Howitt (Labour)
• Stuart Agnew (UKIP)
• Geoffrey Van Orden (Conservative)
• Tim Aker (UKIP)
• David Campbell Bannerman (Conservative)

What do the MEPs actually do? Other than causing us mere mortals a massive headache at times with some utterly ridiculous policies (yes McAvan I’m looking at you!) they are supposed to:

For some reason many elements of regulatory bodies and public health are determined to bundle electronic cigarettes up with tobacco rulings. Of course, they claim it is all in the name of public health, denormalising smoking, protecting the children, or some other inane reason.

Most of those reasons are of course, founded in ideology rather than actual facts but they are determined to put vaping in the same pigeon-hole as tobacco and smoking.

It seems that insanity reigns supreme pretty much everywhere you look these days. From the incredibly bizarre rulings down under to the outrageous propaganda emanating from the US. Nothing in the realms of tobacco harm reduction or e-cigarettes is left alone.

So you’d be forgiven for thinking that the insanity couldn’t get much worse. But it has.

You’d think from this headline that the recently passed legislation would actually be a good thing wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be way off course. Not particularly surprising really.

In a rare display of self-restraint, I decided to hold off putting my thoughts down on this one, not because I didn’t want to. I held off mainly because I’ve had a lot of other advocacy stuff to do locally along with my usual 9-5. More on that in another post I think. I digress, in the first sentence too!

New South Wales, Australia. Come with me on a little journey, if you will, and let’s see what insanity awaits.

Just for once, I would dearly love to see a non-profit organisation that actually has some kind of moral standard. The simple fact is, I seriously doubt that any non-profit in the field of anti-tobacco has any kind of morals. At all.

Don’t get me wrong here, I’m all for a non-profit organisation to actually raise awareness of issues, conduct research, educate the masses and so forth, but there has to be some moral and ethical standard.

Today we saw the release of the manifesto for the Liberal Democrat Party. Oh my word. The manifesto is a delightfully dull read (that’s an hour of my life I’ll never see again), but the part that I want to take a closer look at is this bit.

Support effective public awareness campaigns like Be Clear on Cancer, working closely with charities to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of killer diseases.

Seems to be a relatively benign introduction, doesn’t it? After all, we do have rights. Just as we had rights when we smoked. We are after all human beings with rights and privileges within our respective societies.

Trouble is, this particular ‘group’ are anything but benign.

Looks pretty enticing doesn’t it? The site goes over pretty much all the legislative bullshit ranging from taxation, through bans, marketing and sales, right up to regulation. The site encourages the user to sign a petition. Fortunately for me, I use a pretty large high-resolution monitor so I caught the site footer immediately.

Ah social media. Both a boon and a burden. I had the dubious pleasure to be introduced to another anti group yesterday which set me to headbutting my desk repeatedly. I posted a (relatively) short blog yesterday which covered some of their tactics.

Unfortunately for them, the ever lovely big*sparkles*Shannon, found this little gem buried in the rough.

Cue more head/desk action on my part. Given the diabolical nature of @sacstand I just had to have a nose around, just to see what other mischief these folks were up to. It does seem that the entire site went up in November 2013, so it is pretty old and doesn’t appear to have had any updates to it. Either that means they can’t be bothered to maintain it, or they believe that the information contained on the site is sufficient to secure more funding.