Saturday 31 March 2012

Quick! Blow More Tax On TV Ads!

Considering today's breathless horror - led by Chief Medical Adviser Professor Dame Sally Davies - at the thought of a cigarette being smoked near a child, we can surely expect a government-funded advertising campaign soon condemning people who allow kids to attend barbecues. Yes?
A study by the French environmental campaigning group Robin des Bois found that a typical two-hour barbecue can release the same level of dioxins as up to 220,000 cigarettes.

Dioxins are a group of chemicals known to increase the likelihood of cancer.

The figures were based on grilling four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages.
If a few cigarettes deserve several hours of furrow-browed BBC coverage, 220,000 of them must require commandeering of the entire BBC network for best part of a week, I should imagine. Plus another afternoon to lecture on the dangers of red meat.


For the love of all that's holy! Get to it, Dame Sally, before another summer of slaughter is upon us!


25 comments:

Jay said...

The only solution is to ban all combustion.  No more fires, stoves, ovens, grills, restaurants, heating. No more electricity. No more cars, trains, ambulances, hospitals.  No more computers or internet.  Nothing.  Just ban it all right now. 

Then we need to ban people.  Because really, that's all there will be left to ban if the nannies get their way. 

James Pickett said...

She was blathering on about smoking in cars too, apparently unaware that they are normally well-ventilated, even without the windows open. I have yet to hear a Beeboid point this out in an interview, but they never seem to ask the right questions about anything...

I haven't smoked my pipe for some time, but am seriously thinking about resurrecting it, just to annoy some of these do-gooders.

UNFUNDED TRUTH FACTORY said...

Just a little snippet for car diving health freaks

 Definite killer fumes fom UKs vehicles in....ONE DAY..(24 HOURS)
= (equals)
"Possible" harmfull smoke from ALL UKs smokers in 3 YEARS 11 MONTHS 29 DAYS
CONCLUSION
heath freaks who drive cars............SHUT IT !
YOUR CANT HYPOCRACY IS GETTING UP MY NOSE

Howz about this wee beauty
Mothers who hang out of windows for a smoke can cause COT DEATHS

Statistics Guru 

Jeff Wood said...

"four large steaks, four turkey cuts and eight large sausages"

As long as someone remembered the crusty bread and the beer, a fun piece of research.

ivandenisovich said...

Does anyone
understand what the function of a Chief Medical Officer is and why we have to
pay for one?  Is a job description
available from the DH and can anyone apply or do would be applicants have to demonstrate
an aptitude for spouting medical establishment dogma and be as intellectually
challenged as the US Surgeon General?  
 

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Great. They're running out of ideas to keep the mortgage covered and then you go give them more! ;)

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Beer? Beer? Are you mad?!?

DaveAtherton20 said...

I am writing a piece which will appear on my blog tomorrow which is an open letter to 
Professor Dame Sally Davies et al, I conclude:

"In conclusion at the risk of sounding discourteous and disrespectful, I can only conclude you people have left medicine and science behind and playing junk science politics. It is not noble to stigmatise, leperise, demonise an identifiable minority while at the same time making smoking parents guilty, possibly grievously depressed if they have suffered a SIDS death with what I consider, frankly ill informed propaganda and at worst bare faced lies"

Stay tuned. 

http://daveatherton.wordpress.com/ 

Jay said...

You could be on to something. I could be working for the antis and nannies... alas, I have too much integrity for that kind of work.  Come to think of it, I have too much integrity for most kinds of work. 

Mr A said...

Er, aren't they shooting themselves in the foot here?   We know that one of their favourite tactics is to go on about the thousands of "harmful chemicals" in fag smoke without ever putting it into context.  But by admitting that the average BBQ produces as many dioxins as 20,000 ciggies, aren't they actually just putting their usual bullshit into context?  In other words, "carcinogenic dioxins" sounds scary.  But by saying the amount is so negligible you'd need 20,000 fags to generate as much as a totally harmless BBQ, aren't they just admitting that their usual proclamations are just alarmist nonsense and bullshit?

Mr A said...

Gak, sorry - 220,000 cigarettes!  Jesus wept, isn't that 20 a day for 30 years!?

Mark Wadsworth said...

Holy crap! This morning, the BBC reported Simon Clark as asking (sarcastically) whether they were going to ban barbecues as well...

Plus why the Hell was the BBC showing these advertisements every half an hour? I thought they didn't do advertising?

john miller said...

I am of the generation that avidly devoured all the science fiction it could lay its hands on when I was young.

Then we dreamed of unlimited energy from nuclear power, flying cars and rockets to space, terraforming Mars and Venus.

But what do we really have in 2012?

One cigarette can kill hundreds of people. Its irrefutable science. Then we find a barbeque is 220,000 time worse. So a barbeque can kill a couple of million people.

Or, its equivalent to 11,000 people chainsmoking in a small space in your garden for an hour, killing a couple of million of your neighbours. Say, eight London Boroughs.

You can only weep. All those morons, cretins and idiots who weren't very good at lessons are winning after all.

john miller said...

Oh my God!

I've just remembered!

The poor bloody Aussies!

Global warming, climate change, global weirding, the hole in ozone layer and now this!

Christ, there can only be 4 people in Australia by now if this can be believed!

Oh, wait...

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Dame Sally said that pollution was 'bunkum' too, remember. So much bunkum that we're being fined £300m for it.

http://m.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/mar/11/britain-300m-fine-london-air-pollution?cat=environment&type=article

Dame Sally also says it's her "duty to make sure everyone knows the risks", so anti-barbecue ads are inevitable ... unless she's another yet another disingenuous tosspot, of course.

ftumch said...

"In conclusion at the risk of sounding discourteous and disrespectful, I
can only conclude you people have left medicine and science behind and
playing junk science politics. It is not noble to stigmatise, leperise,
demonise an identifiable minority while at the same time making smoking
parents guilty, possibly grievously depressed if they have suffered a
SIDS death with what I consider, frankly ill informed propaganda and at
worst bare faced lies"

Dave. My second daughter was a SIDS some 20 years ago. The guilt trip was nothing compared to now, even tho it makes no sense to me... I mean, smoking may well cause cancer n all, but not instant death. What I have to say is, it has to be understood the nature of parenthood, the sense of responibility that comes with that. I mean.... we surely could have done SOMETHING? Every parent Ive met who has lost a child asks the same question. (Part of our councelling at this time was to put us onto a mailing list for a newsletter for berieved parents... it was full of stories by people who's kids, sometimes adults, who had been murdered and all, and yet, they still felt guilt.........)

ivandenisovich said...

The BBC article is full of the usual inaccuracies and an interesting link to http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/pregnancy/pregnancy_passive_smoking.shtml. The BBC is now giving out health advice that claims links between smoking and ADHD but worse still is recommending that people visit ASH for detailed evidence on passive smoking. Last time I looked ASH was not expert at anything except lying a lot.

The comments section is also fun as usual. Especially if you like to read foaming at the mouth bigotry from people I am ashamed to share a species with. Some of them seem to have been up all night voting away.  

Mike Cunningham said...

The finest comment was the complete silence when John Humphries asked the 'Wide-eyed Lady' during the BBC interview, if tobacco smoke was so dangerous, the Government  just didn't ban cigarettes altogether.

The follow-up question about the usefulness of the Volstead Act as an example was never therefore asked.

enraged said...

Why they don't ban cigarettes altogether. Well from Andrew Lansley point of view as stated in a reply to my e-mail, this is why:


Thank you for your email of 9 March to Andrew Lansley about smoking.  I have been asked to reply.

Given 400 years of social acceptance of smoking in the Western world, the Department of Health does not believe that a ban on the sale and production of tobacco in the UK is a realistic way forward and will not support it.  The Department believes that people should have the choice to smoke

                                                                 -----------------------

ASH and the government also don't mind losing revenue as another part of the reply stated:

The Government makes no apologies for working to reduce smoking rates to improve health and wellbeing, even if this means reductions in tax revenue.

                                                                    ------------------------

The rest was complete and utter bullshit about SHS. But I hope everyone that buys their tobacco abroad can take pleasure in knowing that in doing so you're not upsetting the government or the NHS by donating your tobacco taxes to a foreign country.


I think the revival of SHS ads is because, other than the vested interested parties like ASH et al and hard line anti-smokers, the public have lost interest in listening to their bullsit and are putting more effort into hating politicans, quangos, bureaucrats and their like.

IMO the BBQ scare by Dame Silly Davies, can only help, the more that see crap like this being peddled the more people take them with a pinch of salt.

BTW: If I see someone having a BBQ with their kids, especially a non-smoker, can I shout out 'child abuser; you're killing your kids with lethal smoke, I know it's true, the science is settled, Dame Silly told me so.

David said...

And, given that the risks associated with SHS are barely measurable in comparison to primary smoking but nevertheless justify smoking bans they should demand an outright and immediate ban of all smoked tobacco products. Ok, government wouldn't do that (for obvious reasons) but why the silence from the BMA and ASH? Surely, as those who claim to know the facts, their advice should be based on health and not politics? All this fannying around, they're  confusing everyone. 

(Just playing Devil's Advocate....)

David said...

'
The Department believes that people should have the choice to smoke'
So, by having such a right, Lansley is more or less stating that smokers should not be subject to discrimination regarding NHS treatment or employment?

enraged said...

Good point.

enraged said...

Not only are they trotting out the SHS garbage again the smoke police are back on the rise again.

Someone has told me that Tower Hamlets Council are advertising for THREE smoke enforcement officers at £35,000 a pop to catch smokers dropping a cigarette butt and issue a £75 fine.

No doubt the council will inform the enforcers to concentrate on the elderly & women.

theprog said...

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/smoking-is-no-longer-acceptable-says-lansley-7624905.html 

'Smoking should no longer be considered an acceptable part of normal life, the Health Secretary has declared, as a ban on tobacco promotion comes into force.'
You should reply by asking how this equates with his response above....

It becomes more pathetic by the day.

Dick_Puddlecote said...

Already working on that, David. ;)