/facepalm
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) is trying to balance finding ways to cut underage vaping while at the same time ensuring vapes are available to help adult smokers to quit.
We are ruled by morons.
The government has an ambitious plan of making England smoke-free by 2030.
The government has lots of ambitious plans. They backfire more than Wile E. Coyote's do...
Angry residents want Southend Council to fine hospital staff for dropping cigarette butts near their homes.
Trevor Murray, of Hillborough Road, said he has watched the litter build up over the years - and enough’s enough.
He said: “It’s not just outside my stretch of road, but across all the roads around the hospital. Recently I have just been trudging through the cigarettes but nothing is done about it. No one is fined.”The image of Trevor battling gamely through a huge drift of discarded cigarette butts like a Canadian mountie determined to get his man in the frozen Yukon will stay with me a while...
Southend Hospital has a no smoking policy on its grounds, which often leaves those workers who smoke the options of either stopping or resorting to nearby roads.Ah.
Mr Murray, 78, claims it has become a health hazard. He said: “I can actually smell it. I think the hospital has got a big problem. A lot of their staff smoke.”You mean, they can't even persuade their own staff to give up? Despite the millions of pounds they spend?
Yvonne Blücher, managing director of Southend Hospital, said: “We have been made aware of issues with staff littering cigarette butts off of the hospital site.
“The trust maintains a no smoking policy on site. We have increased our no smoking signs in key areas and introduced a tannoy system to remind people that we are a no smoking site.”Yes dear. That's the point. That's why they are dropping them everywhere else. I don't suppose you'd consider changing the policy?
“Whilst we can’t stop our staff smoking off site, they do have an obligation to dispose of their own rubbish responsibly. Although there are already lots of litter bins with ashtrays at the entrances to our hospital site, we are looking to manage the problem better. One thing we will be doing is cleaning in those off site areas.”No, of course not. You'll just spend more taxpayer's cash on non-medical issues, after all,. it grows on trees, doesn't it?
Frustratingly, I had left my blue salbutamol inhaler at home – it was a sunny day and I was travelling light – so had to go home much earlier than I wanted to. In truth, whenever the blowback of a cigarette hits my face, I can expect to wheeze and struggle for the rest of the day. This is the sad reality for many of us asthma sufferers. An attack can be triggered by the slightest stimulus, so we stay wedded to our inhalers because of our condition.But....you clearly don't 'stay wedded' at all. You didn't forget it, you admit you left it at home!
It is my personal belief that smoking while walking on the street should be regulated, and that there should be designated smoking areas in outdoor public spaces, or at least a push to make smoking a stationary activity when done outside.It's not dawned on you that it doesn't really matter if the smoker remains stationary, the smoke won't?
It may sound a bit extreme...You're not kidding! That's just one of the words that sprang to mind...
...and will no doubt make me wildly unpopular – as well as seeming deeply unfun – ...Those weren't quite the words that sprang to mind either!
...but it feels to me a fair policy befitting a city that prides itself on safety and tolerance for everyone.Tolerance for everyone except smokers?
Just as we would expect a person to give up their seat on the tube to someone who might need it more, so too should a smoker respect that the person they are walking by might have an invisible respiratory condition.And so we see the anti-smoking loons switch horses to push the notion that smoking is somehow 'disablist'.
The ambience of the British boozer is being ruined by screaming babies and children whose parents allow them to run riot, according to disgruntled licensees and customers.This is not just an issue that pubs face – ask anyone who has had a day’s shopping or museum visiting or trip on public transport ruined by unruly brats and their often mobile-phone-engrossed, oblivious parents.
The overturning of the pre-1995 ban on children under 14 being allowed in pubs in England and Wales has helped increase food takings, with the introduction of family dining, but the survey results suggest there may be an appetite for a return to a time before the rules were relaxed.The pubs chased ‘family dining’ because they needed customers to replace the smokers driven out by the brewery company’s acquiescence to the anti-smoking agenda.
One customer’s response to the survey said: “My peaceful lunch by the fire with a pint was totally ruined by a child running around whooping and tripping up staff – and when asked to quieten down by the landlord, the poor man faced abuse from over-protective parents, ridiculous!”Bet you’d prefer the smokers back instead, eh?
I know this statement will be unwelcome. I too hate the idea that people cannot change their circumstances. But the terrible truth is that, except through surgery, for the great majority of sufferers obesity is an incurable disease.Now, I’m not going to tear shreds off the idiocy of that statement, mainly because Chris Snowden already did.
Industry and government will resist the obvious solutions until they can be resisted no longer. Eventually the change will have to happen, with similar restrictions on advertising, sponsorship, display and accessibility to those imposed on the tobacco pedlars. One day, though not before many thousands have needlessly died, it will become illegal to advertise any food or drink that merits a red traffic-light warning. They will be sold only in plain packaging, with health warnings, on high shelves.Slippery slope, anyone?
Does this seem draconian to you?No, it sounds insane. And evil.
If so, remember that obesity afflicts a quarter of the adult population, and is rising rapidly. It causes a range of hideous conditions, just one of which – diabetes – accounts for one sixth of NHS admissions and 10% of its budget. In what looking-glass world is this acceptable? If smoking demands fierce intervention, why not overeating?Well, why not? And when that’s been ‘conquered’, what next?
This is the choice we face: to recognise that the only humane and effective means of addressing the obesity epidemic is to prevent more people from being hooked, by restricting the pushers – or to continue a programme of fat-shaming, bullying and compulsory treatment, whose only likely outcome is unhappiness. Now ask yourself again: which of these options is draconian?The former, idiot. The latter penalises only those affected, not everyone else who isn’t.
A decision by the West Australia Opera company to drop Carmen because it features smoking has left its fans and Tony Abbott, the Australian prime minister, fuming about “political correctness gone crazy”.And – despite the cliché – he’s actually right.
“We care about the health and wellbeing of our staff, stage performers and all the opera lovers throughout WA, which means promoting health messages and not portraying any activities that could be seen to promote unhealthy behaviour,” Chard told the West Australian newspaper.I guess they won’t be putting on ‘Faust’ (dabbling in the occult) or ‘Cosi Fan Tutti’ (partner-swapping) either then?
Sporting a cover image of a blue-eyed family with guns clipped to their belts, a new American children's picture book is setting itself out as the solution for all those parents who "carry a gun and sometimes struggle with how to best explain the reasons" to their children.
My Parents Open Carry, by Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew, co-founders of the pro-gun Michigan Open Carry, has been released by small US publisher White Feather Press.
The picture-book fellows a "typical Saturday running errands and having fun together" for 13-year-old Brenna Strong and her parents, say the authors. "What's not so typical is that Brenna's parents lawfully open carry handguns for self-defence."If it sounds familiar, well, we all remember how this tactic has been used by the progressives, don’t we? And are they happy their tactics have been used against them? Reader, they are not:
"Modelled on the gay parenting books of the 1980s (right down to the moustache) this is a vital instruction book for everyone who wants to teach their children tolerance. Tolerance of moustaches that don't match the wig, and tolerance of people who need to over-compensate for 'something' by brandishing a gun in public. Don't worry, we get both messages, loud and clear," wrote one reviewer on Amazon.
"This started out as a 5 Star rating, but quickly went downhill as the evening progressed," wrote another. "After saying our prayers to Jesus and Charlton Heston, I sat on the edge of my kids' bed to read them this book, when I shifted my position and accidentally set off my 9mil that was strapped to my hip, shooting myself in the thigh."
It was described by Raw Story as portraying a "day in the life of 'typical' gun nut family", and "a primer for the children of gun nuts who'll be lucky to see their 10th birthday". "As a prologue to the kids … I'd like point out that – no matter what mommy and daddy say – over 10,000 kids are shot each year in the United States and having a gun in the home makes you less, not more safe," wrote TBogg at Raw Story.Oh, is there anything more delicious than seeing the Righteous squirming and frothing as they are hoist on their own absurd petard?
Children's book publisher Elizabeth Laws, meanwhile, took to Twitter to say that it was the first time in 25 years that "a children's book leaves me speechless".
"Would love to deconstruct everything wrong with this. #1, Open Carry isn't a verb," she wrote. "Bad enough that her parents pack heat, but who made a teen wear a granny blouse? Or tease her hair? #badparenting."Could have been worse, though. They could have been depicted smoking:
Concerns about the message this depiction of smoking sends have been raised by parents in online reviews and on parenting website Mumsnet. On Amazon, one wrote: "Why on earth would a children's book contain even the idea of smoking! Disgusting!"
Another had it that: "It's a lovely book up until you reach the smoking pages. Even though it makes the point that smoking is a bad idea, it makes me really uncomfortable to see any depiction of it in a children's book,"…These people have reproduced and are raising children. No wonder we are in a mess!
People are more likely to quit smoking and make other healthy lifestyle choices if offered small financial incentives, researchers have said.The ‘small financial incentive’ they get through not buying a packet of Benson & Hedges isn’t enough?
The charity Action on Smoking and Health (ASH) said that evidence of the benefit of financial incentives to help people quit was growing and could be “particularly helpful for the poorest most disadvantaged smokers”.
One recent study in Dundee found that smokers in deprived areas who were offered £12.50 per week to quit smoking had a three-month quit rate of more than 30 per cent, compared to the 14 per cent national average.That’s all..? 30%? Doesn't sound like much of a return on the investment to me.
The extent of in-car, child-centric smoking is unknown. Its impact is unknown, there being no realistic way of determining whether a child got a particular condition from a house or a car. This is the definitive modern non-issue, the phenomenon that sounds so bad we needn't trouble ourselves with how widespread it is.Zoe Williams, there, who seems to want to outdo her last disastrous ‘it’s all an attack on the poor really!’ column:
Progressive politicians must take it as a principle that parents love their children with the same intensity regardless of income bracket, and they must make this principle the foundation of their political activity. They are trapped time and again, by the apparently innocuous language of risk management, into positions that, designed to demonise behaviour, actually demonise a class.I…
Schoolchildren as young as 11 have been smuggling brightly-coloured electronic shisha pens into classrooms in pencil cases.
These five pens were seized at from schoolchildren in Southwark and passed onto anti-fraud officers at HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) for inspection.Cue the hysteria!
Head teacher’s union NAHT this week called for parents to be banned from taking e-cigarettes onto school premises.
They have warned the promotion of flavoured e-cigarettes may be particularly appealing to children.Well, of course they have...
Sally Bates, chair of the NAHT policy committee, said: “The long-term effects of inhaling it in the form of e-cigarettes is unknown.
“It is particularly concerning that these products can appeal to a younger market with fruit, candy and alcohol flavours available.
“Schools should send a clear message to pupils and parents that the use of any kind of cigarette, electronic or otherwise is not acceptable on school premises.”Schools should shut up and teach the little darlings to read, write and add up.
Oxfordshire’s hospital trust is to flout a recommendation by a Government body that smoking should be banned from its sites.
This is despite the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) issuing guidance that hospital sites should be “smoke-free”.It’s all very well to say that, and then sit back and claim to have ‘done something’, but what’s often forgotten is that it takes two to tango. And if there’s no-one around to play the music and force couples onto the dance floor at gunpoint, the tango ain’t happening:
Mark Trumper, director of development and the estate at Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “We continue to discourage smoking on all of our hospital sites. However we have accepted that it has not been practical or legally enforceable to prevent patients and visitors from smoking in areas where they are not directly impacting on non-smoking patients, visitors and staff.
“We hope that the installation of shelters will encourage people to consider the impact that smoking has on the wider public, and we hope to create a more appropriate environment around our entrance areas which is where we historically have had a significant problem. ”A reasonable compromise between the rock of progressive demands and the hard place of intransigent smokers unwilling to obey diktats not backed up by the force of law?
The decision to install the shelters was criticised by many of Oxfordshire’s senior doctors, including Dr Jonathan McWilliam, the county’s director of public health.Yadda yadda yadda...
Prof Mike Kelly, director of public health at Nice, said: “It is absurd that smoking is still being passively encouraged within hospitals. The professionals have to be willing to take this guidance on.”Which part of 'this cannot be enforced in law' did you not understand?
All Merton fire fighters have recently completed their NHS level one intervention training, which means that they now have the knowledge to direct smokers towards the LiveWell stop smoking service, run by Merton Council.I…
Smoking is the primary cause of accidental fires and the brigade conducts more than 800 home visits per year.
With this added training the health and wellbeing of the residents concerned can be improved through signposting them towards this free six week programme.Because of course it’s all about safeguarding the ‘health and well-being of the residents’, isn't it? And nothing at all to do with conditioning the populace to believe that there's nothing wrong with agents of the state prying into your affairs and giving you unwanted advice...
Cabinet member for adult social care and health, Councillor Linda Kirby said: "Smoking has a major impact on a person’s health and working with our colleagues in the Fire Service will help us spread the message that we have an excellent service ready to support residents to stop smoking."Oh, right. I forgot 'And ensuring we can still supply employment for a steady stream of nannies, prodnoses and fussbuckets while our core business - keeping the bins emptied and the roads passable - goes to hell in a handcart'.
Local councils recently took over responsibility for public health, including initiatives to cut smoking and drinking and lower obesity rates, from the NHS.
They are now under pressure to improve in order to achieve Government targets of saving 30,000 lives a year by 2020.Yes, all the councils will now be under pressure to send you more glossy leaflets and come up with idiotic schemes in a desperate attempt to hit these targets while avoiding the actual things we pay council tax for.
A man was left in hospital after the historic first wedding on Southend Pier descended into a brawl.
Police and paramedics were called after violence broke out in the toilet of the Cultural Centre, where the reception was being held on Saturday night. It left one guest, 23, with a facial injury.Lovely! Mind you, the smoking policy is also a recipe for disaster...
Guests who wanted to smoke had to hop on a pier train for the 1.3mile trip to shore every time they needed to light up./facepalm
'Although we did not see any studies in their entirety, we noted one of the documents referred to a trial related to vaporising propylene glycol and children...I've got a little list, scientists, if you need more test subjects!
One of the biggest recent successes in public health has been against smoking. Punitive taxes on tobacco, better education about the health effects, a near-total ban on advertising and the marginalisation of smoking in public places seems to have worked.'Seems to have', Dan? Either it's worked, or it hasn't. And if it's worked, why are they keeping up the pressure?
Food presents a more difficult problem: unlike tobacco, we need food to live. But trans-fats, salt and sugar are all identifiable ingredients that can be taxed and banned. It’s disagreeable to argue that government should interfere in the contents of our stomachs, but as this January will show — like every New Year before it — we are as a nation incapable of slimming on our own. We need help, before we literally choke on our own jowls.It doesn't seem to be true, but no matter!
He said he made the comment because he saw the women smoking outside a council office, and he is very anti-smoking.Ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha…
Councillor David Stephenson made a joke about PCs Fiona Bone and Nicola Hughes, who died last week in a gun and grenade attack.
He made the comment in front of the wife of a serving police sergeant, who was upset by what he said and told her husband.
Her husband, who lives in Ilkeston and serves with Nottinghamshire police, said Mr Stephenson said: "If you get 100 points for shooting one policewoman and 200 points for shooting two policewomen, how many do you get for shooting a lawyer?"And in attempting to explain it away, he merely dug himself in deeper:
He said: "It was a tasteless comment or sick joke that someone makes off the cuff, for which I apologise.
"I have always been an enthusiast for banning what I term 'short weapons' which includes pistols and sawn-off shotguns.They’ve been banned. Do keep up!
"I am totally against the use of guns in any shape or form and no-one should have been exposed to them in the way that those two lady police officers were."So, you’ve just offended all the farmers and sport shooters and proven yourself to be a completely out of touch cartoon-version of a 'typical' old duffer Tory councillor. Well done!
The officer contacted Derbyshire police federation, MP Jessica Lee and Erewash Borough Council leader Chris Corbett to complain about Mr Stephenson's remarks.
Mr Corbett said: "I was appalled to learn of the words used by Councillor Stephenson to a lady who, unbeknown to him, was the wife of a serving police officer.
"I have taken immediate and severe action by removing him from his post as a lead member of the council and he will no longer serve on the council executive to take effect immediately.
"It is not possible to remove him as a borough councillor as he has been elected to that position by residents in his constituency. However, his name has been removed from the list of approved Conservative candidates and he will not be allowed to stand for re-election (for the party)."Quite unlike the dithering of Call-Me-Dave and subsequent revelations over the Chief Whip, eh?
Hospital spokesman Kirk Lower said: "We encourage people not to smoke, but the reality is that people want to and we're trying to manage that situation."
The site in Gorleston officially became a smoke free zone on National No Smoking Day in 2005, but smokers are regularly seen lighting up outside the main entrance.Where it’s perfectly legal to do so. And so they are planning to build shelters to encourage them to move away from the main doors. Good idea?
Mr Lower said the hospital was "not conceding defeat, it's recognising the reality of the situation. We have got signs, we have staff come out to ask smokers not to smoke or move off our premises - it doesn't work".
"We have thousands of visitors to the hospital, often in times of stress, and many of them have a need to smoke - they are addicted to nicotine."Who could possibly disagree? Oh. Right.
But Patrick Thompson, from the patient group Norfolk Link, said rebuilding smoking shelters on hospital grounds sent out the wrong message.What, the message that when an organisation makes an error of judgement, it’s wrong to correct it?
"We'd like the site to be a non-smoking site, but 'the site' is only covered by the building and not the outside areas.
"We don't want to see it happen, but I think to encourage smokers moving away from where they are at the moment and have to walk even further - they might consider given up even more."‘We’..? Is that the Royal We?
Caroline Gutteridge, prosecuting for Leicester City Council, said the authority had been tipped off by a member of the public that shisha was being smoked in an upstairs room.I'm amazed they actually did anything about it!
Three plain-clothed city wardens then visited the business on March 11 around 11pm and asked if they could smoke.
She said: "They were told to wait about 30 minutes and were then shown to an upstairs room where they ordered shisha, food and drink."
Two council health and safety officers waiting outside entered the cafe, identified themselves and were taken upstairs by Patel's Leeds-based partner. Mrs Gutteridge said:
"They found 20 people smoking shisha pipes in two areas."
