Jane's Merrick's Thinly Veiled Callousness and Bigotry

An article by Jane Merrick in The Independent caught my eye for the fact its content amounts to little more than, "I hate the sight of smokers." Devoid of any thought or logic, it essentially reads like a spittle-flecked outburst of bigotry that would be unacceptable against any other group of people, and it's grotesquely evident the lack of empathy she has for smokers as people - everything is about her, her her, and smokers are just grotesque entities without feelings.

Some of them are in wheelchairs, dressed in their pastel green hospital gowns, others looking so frail you wonder whether they should be out of bed at all and outside in the cold. All of them are smoking.

As you walk into the hospital, with the stress and worry of your own illness or that of a member of your family uppermost in your mind, it is a truly depressing sight.

Yes, fuck these bastards depressing me with their wheelchairs and frailness, SMOKING! Don't they know that I'm having a mole removed today and that I'm worried about how big the scar will be. These people look disgusting. They shouldn't be outside, they should be in the morgue. Now what time's my yoga class tomorrow again?

As a former smoker, and as someone instinctively wary about the state becoming too much of a nanny, I should be in favour of allowing patients to do what they want, as long as it doesn’t affect others.

Aaaaaaaand here it comes, as predictably as racist comments tumble out of the mouth succeeding, "I'm not racist, but..."

But when Professor Mike Kelly, public health chief of Nice, says the NHS needs a “culture shift” to end “the terrible spectacle of people on drips in hospital gowns smoking outside hospital entrances”, I am afraid he is right.  

Why is it a "terrible spectacle"? And why should people be protected by things they see as being "terrible spectacles"? People used to find unmarried mothers/very young mothers with their babies a "terrible spectacle". To save the faint of heart from seeing a choice of which they disapprove, should teen mothers be sent to the convent? Some people find gay couples a "terrible spectacle", should they be locked up in prison? Quite clearly no. Basically, if you find people engaging in a legal activity to be a "terrible spectacle", don't look.

It is one thing to not stop a smoker satisfying his or her addiction – if they are fit enough to walk off site, then let them do that. But if the patient is not able to walk that far, the last thing they should be doing is smoking. The NHS should not act as an enabler for their addictions, either by permitting nurses or healthcare assistants to help the patient down the stairs, or by providing the shelter in the first place.

"The last thing they should be doing is smoking." Hmm, is that right?  What should they be doing then, crying with frustration that they're stuck in hospital stressed out of their mind that they're somewhere horrible that they don't want to be and unable to engage in one of the few pleasures that can break up one's day? Where one can contemplate things and have a few minutes to themselves? Should a patient with days to live be spending their last days craving a cigarette, some respite from their horrible situation, wanting to engage in one of the few activities that can help them feel normal again and as if they're back in the real world rather than the hell of hospital? Should they be smoking in the toilet, only to then be restrained and held down like a criminal as they emerge from the bathroom, a crew of security screaming at them?
What should terminally ill smokers be doing, Jane? Not to mention the number of ill people who will check themselves out without having full treatment because they cannot smoke. I know, I am one of these people who have done this, and with this there will be millions more.

From my smoking days, I know there is nothing like seeing a group of people puffing away on cigarettes to make you also want a fag. Like banning smoking in pubs (instrumental in helping me quit several years ago), removing it from the NHS will indeed encourage an out-of-sight-out-of-mind cultural shift – and improve patients’ lives.

So because you're an intolerant ex-smoker who is apparently mentally thrown into disarray at the sight of a cigarette, you want smokers to suffer more in their worst times. Should all sight of alcohol be removed from society for the sake of alcoholics? I assume you drink, Jane. Don't you know that you with your glass of rosé could trigger off a recovering alcoholic to go on a binge that loses him his job and the life he'd tried to piece back together? Better not drink in front of anyone, ever again. You can't tell who's a recovering alcoholic and who isn't, after all. Your lip-service to "improve patients' lives" at the end of this paragraph fools no one. You don't give a shit about the patients, you KNOW it will make their lives considerably more uncomfortable, you're just selfish and despise smokers.

For nurses, doctors and other staff who want to smoke in their breaks, trusts should be even tougher: don’t smoke when you’re on duty. I will never forget the moment a midwife, on a home visit to my week-old baby, put her finger in my daughter’s mouth to demonstrate latching-on. As my baby clamped her lips around the midwife’s finger, the smell of fresh cigarette smoke wafted around her hands, and I recoiled in horror. Any who comes into contact with patients – nurses who have hands-on contact - should not be doing their jobs smelling of smoke. Staff will say they need a cigarette to relieve stress, but the long-term effects of smoking do more harm.

Staff are constantly washing their hands with sanitiser gel etc, the chances of her not having done are negligible, and even so, there are far worse things you could be "recoiling in horror" about such as the superbugs and deadly infections which plague NHS wards on a regular basis being on her hands. But again at the end you let slip that it's the smell of smoke that so terrifies you, not the thought that she'd rubbed her fingers in tobacco and not washed them. I think you have a phobia to be honest - get a therapist for it, you can beat it. Staff "will say they need a cigarette to relieve stress" probably because they do need a cigarette to relieve stress. I have spoken to numerous members of staff who say after the horrendous things they see, a cigarette helps bring them back to composure. "The long term effects of smoking do more harm"? Than what? A mental breakdown? Medical blunders that kill patients because the nurses can't concentrate due to being forced not to smoke? Again, Jane, you know you are lying but you don't care because you're consumed by your hatred of smokers and smoking.

Nice’s new advice underlines the mixed messages we are given on public health. The Government, after the election, promised to introduce plain packaging on cigarettes, acknowledging the evidence that it would curb smoking, but then caved into pressure from the tobacco industry by shelving the plans. Ministers should back Nice on smoking in hospitals – but they should also look again at plain packaging to wean us off this habit altogether.

They didn't "acknowledge the evidence" because there was not and is still not any evidence. In fact the entirety of this paragraph is ill-informed nonsense, but that doesn't matter. You just want anything to be done to punish smokers. It doesn't matter whether or not it will work, as long as they are being punished until they agree to stop being human filth and agree to join civilised society by stopping smoking.

Smoking, Vaping and "No Such Thing as Safe Sex"

Emily wrinkled her nose as she saw a man and woman walking down the street holding hands. She looked around to make sure there hadn't been any children watching and, satisfied that there weren't, breathed a sigh of relief. "Public displays of affection" as they were once called, now rightly looked down upon as advertisements designed to lure children into having sex, had almost become a thing of the past. Feeling twinges of irritation that the government still weren't taking action about such shocking and dangerous displays despite the fact hundreds of children take up having sex every day, she felt relieved as she reached the door to the safety of her office. She hurried up the stairs to find her colleagues hunched round a desk covered in papers, shaking their heads and muttering.

"Emily," said Alison, motioning towards the circular table where the office staff were sitting. Emily walked over, pulling a chair from one of the vacant desks, moving it to sit with everyone else.
Alison tugged her arm.

 "ITV ran an advert for condoms last night," she spoke urgently.

"B-but why? People don't need condom-"

"And MPs are getting letters from constituents about how they can do sexual acts with much less risk of cervical cancer, throat cancer, tongue cancer, herpes, chlamydia, AIDS and all the other terrible things associated with sexual acts."

"So they say," Emily spat. "Condoms can still break. And we'd nearly stopped sex in its tracks. It's a completely unnecessary risk."

"What do we do now?" Martin chimed from the other side of the table, looking up from his papers.

Twirling a strand of her curly hair around her finger so hard it almost felt close to being torn out, Alison, almost hyperventilating gasped, "Why?!! Why won't Big Sex stop marketing killer products to people? Do they not have children? Do they not care if their grandmothers get gonorrhea and their children get AIDS? Is money so important to them that human life means nothing?"

"They say this new product makes it safer-" Martin began, but he was interrupted by Emily.

"Except that as we know, there's no such thing as safe sex. This will encourage more people to have sex meaning more people will die of illnesses related to sex, more children will start having sex. It will make children think there is such a thing as safe sex, just as it's been denormalised."

The staff of the Institute for a Healthy National Workforce all grimaced. They knew that condoms posed a serious risk to all the good work they'd done in denormalising sex. It had been a difficult road. Big Sex had of course opposed them at every step of the way, as businesses are wont to do - putting profit before people is their game. Then there were members of the public who had been tricked by Big Sex into thinking that there'd be a depopulation crisis if sex was banned. Of course, we were able to educate them that such scare stories simply wouldn't be the case, and millions of babies are happily born in the UK every year to couples who go, risk free, to the NHS Fertilisation Centres so that the sperm can be deposited in a tube, tested for risk and then implanted in the woman via a spatula. Many people now wouldn't dream of having sex due to the highly successful education campaigns. Emily's favourite was one that had been piloted at train stations nationwide in the previous year's festive season - actors dressed as giant, diseased vaginas ran up to commuters and began to envelope them, before giving them informational pamphlets on how sex kills. Britain was so close to being a sex-free society. But then there were the libertarians. Emily felt sick and anxious whenever she heard the word.

"So what do we do?" Martin asked again.

"We've got to get condoms off the market. Millions of people will die if we don't," Emily spoke, eyes almost glazed as she clenched her fists.

"There's no such thing as safe sex."

Health Advocates Hold Emergency Meeting in Bid to Tackle Growing Problem of 'Big Sun'

DANGER: Experts warn that millions of children will die as a result of being exposed to sunlight

NEWSFLASH - Doctors, public health experts and politicians last week held emergency meetings last week to combat the sunburn epidemic after experts warn sun cream does not provide adequate protection. Over the last two weeks, in Britain, an estimated 9 million children have contracted sunburn, increasing their chances of dying later in life, and increasing their chances of skin cancer. In order to protect the public, possible considerations included mandatory niqabs for all citizens and free flights to Siberia for all citizens when the temperature exceeds 20C. Inspired by "The Simpsons Movie", enquiries into whether fitting a giant, sun-blocking dome over the whole of the United Kingdom were made, but deemed not to be viable due to limitations in technology.

A spokesperson commented, "Tough action will be needed to combat the significant health dangers caused by the sun, and we must address these issues urgently.

 "Many have taken precautions to protect their children's health but due to Big Sun's refusal to comply with doctors' UK voluntary regulations, we must urge the government to consider legislation. We urge the government to impose a curfew between the hours of 10:00 and 14:00, with fines for failure to comply."

"I, Drone (Special Cannabis Edition)

Post courtesy of NannyingTyrants. The only reason I am posting this here (when it is not mine) is because the tobacco control wonks have tried to have it censored. I don't know who this retarded, hideous bastard is, but he deserves millions of years of contempt for trying to make the poor poorer and for thinking he's somehow morally superior to everyone just because he doesn't smoke.



If the name Daniel Clayton doesn't ring any tobacco control industry bells, do not be concerned.  In comparison to the Root of All Evil, The Dreadful, Anna Gilmore, Stanton Glantz, or other well-known tobacco control industry names, nobody would consider to list Daniel Clayton among them. He used to work for ASH Wales as their Youth Health Specialist (which is, in my humble opinion, more than bit frightening that people like this have had access to our kids, especially after you've read through the contents of his tweet history), before moving on to some other Public Health job in Cardiff. He's nobody, really. It would be difficult to even class him as a "useful idiot."  No, do not be alarmed if you've not heard about this rugby-loving, fan of Pink Floyd, and generally mouthy prohibitionist before; he is just another one of Public Health's True Believers, blindly following and parroting whatever propaganda the tobacco control industry machine can produce.

Mr Daniel Clayton
There is a YouTube vid of him here, but I don't recommend watching it

But I bring him up today because Daniel Clayton likes to tweet absurdities on a regular basis. In other words, his moronic and often overtly socialist and sometimes communistic tweets entertain me.  Indeed, it was enormously entertaining to see him get all worked up over a union asking it members to oppose plain packaging.  In his mind, unions are socialist "for the greater public good" constructs, much like he views the whole of the NHS and every other taxpayer-funded group you can think of, and therefore unions should also toe the tobacco control line. But when unions don't toe the line, Daniel Clayton does not forget nor forgive.  He's kind of like a little terrier set loose from its lead, padding through the estate, nipping at the ankles of the postman who dares to stray into the little mutt's territory:  Harmless? Not too bright? A nuisance, perhaps? Well, it's amusing to me.

I could go on, but I'll get to the point.  Mr Clayton posted this tweet today:

Now, OK, think about this for a moment.  Mr Clayton isn't sure whether cannabis should be legalised, but if it is made legal, so long as people who smoke weed don't use tobacco in their spliffs, then that's fine by him.  You see, in his view, only the evil tobacco plant kills people. Or perhaps his view is simpler than that: Tobacco companies kill people.  It should be noted that Mr Clayton does not like capitalism, big business, or indeed much of anything but socialised taxpayer-funded quangos and government bodies.  But the above tweet is absurd in its hypocrisy, and I point it out today because it illustrates the next big movement in the tobacco control industry.

The tobacco control industry won't necessarily come out in support of cannabis use, but they will aggressively campaign for people to smoke their weed without using tobacco.  If you're in America, this is no big deal.  Most pot-smoking Americans smoke a J neat -- that is, no tobacco is used when rolling it up.  Bong lovers do not use tobacco either, and of course the ever favourite easy-to-carry pot pipe is also smoked with only cannabis in the bowl ... in the States.  But here in the UK and within Europe, a lot of cannabis smokers prefer to roll up a fatty with a bit of tobacco mixed in.  Every culture and region goes about smoking cannabis their own way.

But shame on you Europeans and Britons who use tobacco whilst getting high! The tobacco control industry does not approve! Don't you realise that the magical tobacco plant is a billion times more dangerous than cannabis?  Does it not matter to you that that very same potentially cancer-causing chemicals present in tobacco smoke are also present in cannabis smoke? You may as well give up cooking food and attending bonfire parties or enjoying the warmth of a log-burning fireplace.  The same potentially cancer-causing chemical constituents of any burning plant material are present in all of these things. The same ones. Including cannabis.

The tobacco control industry won't tell you that. Their agenda is to destroy tobacco companies and make smokers' lives as miserable as possible in the process. So if you mix tobacco in with your spliff, you are funding the tobacco industry, and they do not like it one bit.

It's not about health. It's about controlling your  choices whilst promoting their agenda against an industry they do not like.  Daniel Clayton cannot see the wood for the trees. He is blinded by the tobacco control industry's hateful campaigns against consumers of tobacco products and the companies and farmers who supply the consumers.  Destroy them all, no matter the costs to society.

I can only imagine a similar fate happening to a legal Big Cannabis industry, should something like that ever occur.

Just so we're all clear about what is and is not acceptable when it comes to smoking cannabis, a demonstration using pictures for your viewing pleasure:

This is fine:

Rolling a fatty neat - no tobacco

This is also [extremely] fine:

Hitting a bong, whilst naked and wearing only stockings is acceptable behaviour - no tobacco
Propane torch, optional

This is completely unacceptable:

Rolling a spliff with hand rolling tobacco -- this is very, very bad

And this is also right out:

Rolling a spliff with tobacco from a cigarette is also very bad

Update: Thanks to DP for the link to the ASH 2012 conference tweet (see comments).